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Exhibitions currently running:
Venetian Visions: the art of Canaletto, Tiepolo, Carlevarijs and their contemporaries 1700 – 1800 - The eighteenth century was possibly the last great period of Venetian art. It witnessed a wealth in artistic production from paintings, drawings and prints to porcelain, lace and glass. This display will draw from the V&A collections of prints, drawings, textiles, ceramics and glass to showcase Venetian arts during this age of stylistic splendour. Until 1 April.
Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton - To celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the V&A is holding an exhibition of portraits of Her Majesty by photographer Cecil Beaton (1904-1980). Presenting highlights of the V&A’s archive of Beaton’s royal photography, the exhibition will depict the Queen in her roles as princess, monarch and mother and include a number of photographs never before seen as well as Beaton’s diaries and letters. Romantic images of the teenage Princess Elizabeth and her mother and sister are followed by glittering and highly-staged photographs of the Queen in her Coronation robes. There are tender portraits of the Queen at home with her husband and young family, and later official portraits. The exhibition includes a number of rarely seen photographs, as well as film clips and Beaton's personal scrapbooks, and shows how the popular image of the monarchy changed dramatically over the course of the 20th century. From 8 February until 22 April.
Permanent exhibitions at V&A:
The William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery - Opens 24 May 2008. The new gallery, designed by Eva Jiricna, will transform the presentation of the V&As jewellery collection, one of the most celebrated and comprehensive in the world. Over 3500 jewels will tell the story of jewellery from 2000 BC to the present. On display will be jewels from the courts of Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great and Napoleon, including the famous Beauharnais Emeralds. Jewels by the great houses of Boucheron, Chaumet and Cartier, including Lady Mountbatten's tutti frutti bandeau will be on show. Artist jewellers from Lalique and C.R. Ashbee to Wendy Ramshaw and Peter Chang will reflect the 20th century and the present day.
European Silver - This event is marking the completion of the museum`s redisplay of its silver galleries, the largest public collection of silver in the UK. It contains more than 500 silver and gold objects from medieval times to the Napoleonic era.
British Galleries 1500 - 1900 - Re-opened galleries are arranged chronologically to trace the history of British design from the reign of Henry VIII to Queen Victoria.
Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art - After a three-year-long renovation and redesign, and with the generous financial help of the Jamel family, the V&A will open the new Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art this month. It will be an outstanding new home for over 400 objects, including ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, glass and woodwork, dating from the great days of the Islamic caliphate of the 8th and 9th centuries to the years preceding the First World War. The area covered stretches from Spain in the west to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan in the east, taking in important centres of artistic production in the Arab lands, Turkey and Iran. The Gallery's highlight will be the Ardabil carpet, the world's oldest dated carpet, and one of the largest, most beautiful and historically important in the world. Other highlights include an exquisite rock crystal ewer from 11th century Egypt, an ivory casket made in 11th century Spain, and the sword of Shah Tahmasp.
Sculpture Galleries at the V&A The V&A's outstanding sculpture collection will be redisplayed this spring in the new Dorothy and Michael Hintze Galleries. Opening directly onto the new John Madejski garden, the light-filled galleries will display some of the Museum's finest sculpture dating from 1600 to 1900 made by British sculptors or acquired by British patrons. The galleries have been named in honour of Dorothy and Michael Hintze who gave a generous donation of £1.5 million through the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation. The galleries include a sequence of magnificent sculptures such as Bernini's fountain of Neptune, Canova's Theseus and the Minotaur, and works by Giambologna, Roubiliac, Delvaux and Rysbrack, all of which were once in the collections of wealthy British patrons. Among the great British sculptors represented will be Nollekens, Flaxman, Banks, Alfred Stevens and Alfred Gilbert. The galleries tell the story of different phases and types of sculpture. The V&A's collection of Italian garden and fountain statuary is unrivalled outside Florence and Rome. The central section of the gallery, adjacent to the John Madejski garden, will appropriately be given over to this genre. It will show works such as Bernini's Neptune, once owned by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Giambologna's dynamic Samson Slaying a Philistine (c.1562).
Victoria & Albert Museum history:
The V&A began life in 1852, under the directorship of Henry Cole, as the Museum of Manufactures, a gathering objects from the Great Exhibition and a motley collection of plaster casts - it being Albert`s intention to rekindle Britain`s industrial dominance by inspiring factory workers, students and craftspeople with examples of excellence in applied art and design. This idea disappeared fast. Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone of the present building in 1899, ten years later Astone Webb`s imposing main entrance, with its octagonal cupola and flying buttresses and pinnacles, was finished.
V&A Opening hours:
10.00 to 17.45 daily
10.00 to 22.00 Fridays (selected galleries remain open after 18.00 )
Closed 24, 25 and 26 December
For more information please visit www.vam.ac.uk
