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Exhibitions currently running:
David Bowie is - The V&A has been given unprecedented access to the David Bowie Archive to curate the first international retrospective of the extraordinary career of David Bowie - one of the most pioneering and influential performers of modern times. David Bowie is will explore the creative processes of Bowie as a musical innovator and cultural icon, tracing his shifting style and sustained reinvention across five decades. The V&A’s Theatre and Performance curators, Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh have selected more than 300 objects that will be brought together for the very first time. They include handwritten lyrics, original costumes, fashion, photography, film, music videos, set designs, Bowie’s own instruments and album artwork. Until 28 July.
Research on Paintings: technical art history and connoisseurship - The display presents the most notable discoveries of recent research on the V&A's collection of European paintings and will concentrate on 11 Italian, Netherlandish and French works painted between the early 15th and the early 19th centuries. During a recent research programme over 2 years, 200 of the Museum's paintings were re-attributed or re-identified. The display provides a rich account of the principles and methods applied by researchers to establish the nature and origins of oil paintings: close examination (connoisseurship), documentary research and technical analysis. The 11 case studies will provide a step-by-step introduction to a subject which is often considered the preserve of art historians, conservators and other specialists. Until 22 September.
Permanent exhibitions at V&A:
The William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery - 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
