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PRESS INFORMATION ________________________________________________
This list features major exhibitions and gallery openings at the V&A. Further details are available From: (0171) 938 8365.
GENERAL MUSEUM INFORMATION
The Victoria and Albert Museum is the world's greatest museum of the decorative arts, founded in 1 852 to support and encourage excellence in art and design. Permanent collections include fashion, sculpture, textiles, furniture, metalwork, ceramics, glass, jewellery, paintings, prints and photographs, reflecting centuries of achievement from Europe, the Far East, South East Asia and the Islamic world.
Victoria and Albert Museum,
Cromwell Road, London,
SW7 2RL.
Nearest underground, South Kensington. Monday 12.00-17.50 Tuesday to Sunday 10.00-17.50
Admission to the V&A costs £5.00, concessions £3.00.
There is no charge for those under 18, students, pre-booked educational groups, disabled people and their carer, the unwaged (UB4O holders), V&A Patrons, Friends and American and International Friends. Entry is free between 16~30 and 17.50. The V&A opens selected galleries to the public on Wednesday evenings. Late View, from 18.30-20.30, costs f3, and includes a lecture (additional charge), live music and wine bar. Late View runs from 7th May- 9th July 1997. For further details, telephone: (0171) 938 8407.
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THE ART OF THE VICTORIA AND ALBERTMUSEUM:
1999
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SHAMIANA: THE MUGHAL TENT
26 JUNE - 14
SEPTEMBER 1997
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CREATORS OF THE SWEDISH STYLE:23 OCTOBER
1997 -
18 JANUARY 1998
A major exhibition celebrating the creators of the popular Swedish style of interior decoration will go on show at the V&A from October this year. At the turn of this century, artist Carl Larsson and his wife created a house inspired by influences as diverse as Japanese prints, British Arts and Crafts ideas and colourful Swedish folk designs. Room-sets, furniture, paintings and photographs illustrate the domestic ideal they invented; today it is imitated world-wide. The exhibition is arranged in collaboration with the Nordic Museum, Stockholm and the Carl Larsson Home in Sundborn, supported by the Swedish Government, leading museums and the cultural authorities in Sweden, and the Embassy of Sweden in London. Cad and Karin Larsson: Creators of the Swedish Style is sponsored by IKEA, with addtional assistance from Ericsson, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken and Skanska AB. The official carrier is SAS, Scandinavian Airlines.
COLOURS OF THE INDUS:
9 OCTOBER 1997 - 29 MARCH 1998
The first ever exhibition on the exquisite and brilliantly-coloured textile traditions of Pakistan will open at the V&A in October 1997. Over 130 costumes and textiles from the 1850's to the present day will be exhibited in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the creation of Pakistan. From beautiful woven silk dresses in vibrant reds and deep indigos, to coats lavishly decorated in gold thread, the exhibition illustrates a culture rich in its textile traditions and love of colour.
(WORKING TITLE) 9 APRIL -26 JULY 1998
This forceful exhibition focuses on the nature and purpose of the poster, looking at the special qualities that have enabled it to survive and flourish as an art form. Drawn from the V&A's own collections of both British and international designs, images will include classic posters of the 1 880s and '90s as well as the work of contemporary designers and agencies. Many of the great names in poster design will be featured, such as Toulouse-Lautrec, The Beggarstaffs, Frank Brangwyn, Cassandre, Ludwig Hohlwein and McKnight Kauffer. The themes of the exhibition centre around three broad groups: Pleasure and Leisure, illustrating the promotion of the arts, entertainment and sport; Protest and Propaganda, covering key moments in our social and political history; and Commerce and Communication, examining the advertisement of products and services.
COLLECTION: 30 MAY 1997 - 11 JANUARY 1998
The first major display devoted to the work of Placido Zuloaga (1834 - 1910), one of the great masters of the art of damascening, opens in the newly refurbished Silver Galleries at the V&A this Summer. The display, comprising some 40 objects, offers a fascinating introduction to the ancient art of damascening, the process of embellishing metal objects with intricate designs of gold and silver inlay. These splendid works of art, the majority of which were made in the Zuloaga workshops in Spain, range from urns and caskets to mirror frames and furniture loaned from the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, which includes the finest examples of Zuloaga's works to be found anywhere in the world.
SUSAN BARRON:
7 JUNE - 7 SEPTEMBER 1997
A chain of pictures housed in eleven books1 stretching to a length of 152 feet and magnificently lit with fibre-optics, goes on show at the V&A in June 1997. Considered by some the equivalent of a medieval illuminated manuscript, and by others a relative of a multi-media music video, Labyrinth of Time, by Susan Barron, is a llvre d'artiste consisting of collage-drawings, black and white photographs, etchings, musical compositions, other ink prints and text with the artist's calligraphy and typography.
Spanish Treasures from the Khalili Collection30 May
1997
- 11 January 1998
The first major exhibition ever devoted to the work of Placido Zuloaga (1834-1910), one of the great masters of the art of damascening, opens in the newly reflirbi shed Silver Galleries at the V & A this summer. This exhibition, comprising some 40 objects, offers a fascinating introduction to the ancient art of damascening, the process of embellishing metal objects with intricate designs of gold and silver inlay. These splendid works of art, the majority of which were made in the Zuloaga workshops in Spain, range from urns and caskets to mirror frames and furniture and are loaned from the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, which includes the finest collection of Zuloaga's works to be found anywhere in the world. Also on display will be five damascened objects from the Zuloaga workshops, including a casket, a miniature picture frame and a scent bottle, from the collections in the V & A.
One of the most impressive works in this loan exhibition is a superb cassone, commissioned by the I ~ collector Alfred Morrison for his celebrated art collection, housed both at f~onthill Manor and at Carlton House Terrace This enormous coffer, over 2 metres long and 120 cm high, was completed in 1871, the first commission executed for Morrison. Known as the 'Fonthill Casket', this superb piece is elaborately decorated with a Neo-Renaissance design of arabesques, swans and winged putti. The casket was created by Zuloaga and his
team of craftsmen over a period of two years. In 1879 the Magazine ofArt described it as a 'triumph of skilled workmanship' which occupied 'a central position' in Mr. Morrison's drawing room at 16 Carlton House Terrace.
Another magnificent example of Zuloaga's art is a pair of large vases dating from 1877. Exhibited in Paris the following year, they subsequently graced Morrison's dining room at Carlton House Terrace. Standing over a metre high and decorated with a profusion of gold and silver damascened ornament in the form of stylised leaves or palmettes, their design is inspired by Moorish amphorae from Southern Spain produced between the ~ 3th and I 5th centuries.
Placido Zuloaga's name is generally associated with the beginning of the damascene industry in Spain during the mid- 1 9th century. The town of Eibar in the Basque region is at the centre of an iron-producing area which supplied the royal armies of Ferdinand and Isabella with small artillery, pikes, armour and powder flasks during the 1 5th century. Records show that the Zuloaga family was resident in Eibar from 1596 where they worked as arm ourers, supplying pistols to the Royal Bodyguard of Ferdinand VII, following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. Eusebio, Placido's father, trained under his uncle Ram6n and was gunmaker to Isabella II and chief armourer of the Spanish Royal Armoury as well as participating in the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. In turn Placido studied with his father and subsequently in Paris and Dresden. Such was the prestige of the family name that both father and son were honoured with the task of restoring the Spanish Royal Armoury in 1848.
Placido received his first official recognition as an artist in 1855 when, together with his father, he exhibited at the Paris Exposition. Their work included a group of pistols, daggers and sabres, sculpture of chiselled iron depicting dead birds and a wild boar, as well as a pair
of damascened and etched album covers. Having taken over the management of his father's factory at Eibar in 1859, the firm began to concentrate increasingly on luxury items, rather than arms, and in 1862 Placido exhibited such works of art at the London Exhibition. It was on this visit that Placido met Alfred Morrison (1821-1897), the celebrated collector and connoisseur who became his most important patron. The son of a wealthy textile magnate, Morrison inherited the estate at Fonthill on his father's death in 1857. Building on his father's collection of classical sculpture, Dutch and Italian Renaissance paintings, Alfred added contemporary objets d~rt, commissioning work from some of the most outstanding artists of his day.
The High Victorian splendour of the newly refurbished Silver Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum provide a sympathetic setting for this exhibition of Zuloaga's work. The Neo-Renaissance decoration of the galleries was executed in the late 1 860s at the same period when the Museum was acquiring its first objects, a small casket and two miniature picture frames, from the Zuloaga workshops in Spain and from the Paris Exposition of 1867. Sixty years later, in 1927, the Museum acquired a coffer and a matchbox, the gifts of Alfred Morrison's widow, Mabel.
Dr. Nasser D. Khaiili, who was born in Iran in 1945, is a scholar, collector and benefactor. Ilaving completed national service, he left Iran in 1967 and now resides in London. Dr. Khalili is a citizen of both the U.K. and the U.S.A.. Since 1970 he has assembled an extensive collection covering a broad range of fields, including the arts of the Islamic world, Japanese art of the Meiji period (1868-1912), Indian and Swedish textiles, and Spanish dam ascene metalwork, as well as of Near and Middle Eastern antiquities.
This exhibition also celebrates the publication of The Art and Tradition of the Zuloagas:
Spanish Damascene from the Khalili Collection, a catalogue of Spanish inlaid metalwork in the Khalili Collection, written by Professor James D. Lavin of the College of William and Mary in Virginia. This lavishly produced book is a landmark in the study of Zuloaga and his contemporaries and the first history of Spanish damascening.
SUSAN BARRON:
7 JUNE - 7 SEPTEMBER 1997
Susan Barron's Labyrinth of Time, one of the longest books in the wo?ldstretching to a length of 152 metres - will go on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in June 1997.
Described as both a modern day illuminated manuscript and a relative of multimedia music video, Labyrinth of Time is a llvre d'artiste housed in eleven books and consisting of collage-drawings, black and white photographic prints, etchings, musical compositions, drawings, ink prints and illustrated text. The V&A display will include a magnificent fibre-optic system.
The seven volumes, can be read as a book or unfolded into six configurations that weave a visual puzzle of images and text, creating a maze of intricate passageways and unsolvable riddles.
Snippets from newspapers and printed text are juxtaposed with musical notes, parts of envelopes, maps and intricate etchings. Ink blots dance across the pages, faces peer out from complex text and boats sail across a sea of anatomical muscles. Labyrinth of Time draws the reader into a world of mystery and magic, where time and place slip imperceptibly into one another.
The National Art Library, within the V&A, has a long tradition of collecting and displaying the art and craft of the book in its many forms - finely printed or illustrated books, bookbinding, llvres d'artiste of all kinds. Many contemporary artists have used the form of the book as a starting point for creating works which may rely on any combination of graphic, textual, tactile or sculptural effects to make an impact, and the Library's rich collection of modern book art aims to represent this movement in all its diversity.
VISITOR INFORMATION
The display takes place on Level 3 of the Henry Cole Wing. The Museum is open 10.00-17.50 Tuesday to Sunday, 12.00-17.50 on Monday. Admission to the V&A costs £5.00, concessions £3.00. There is no charge for those under 18, students, pre-booked educational groups, disabled people and their carer, the unwaged (UB40 holders), V&A Patrons, Friends and American and International Friends. Entry is free between 16.30 and 17.50.
"Yes, tiaras and spark/ers. .
1 am absolutely sure that is the dress."(Hardy Amies, 1 960)
Following the fascinating historical path of Social Season dress, The Cutting Edge celebrates fifty years of society fashion. The Social Season is synonymous with glamour, splendour and class; The Cutting Edge features garments worn and donated by the top echelon of British society.
With ball gowns and evening wear by Britain's most established couturiers, The Cutting Edge looks at the requirements and conventions ruling half a decade of society fashion. In the immediate post-war era, a debutante ball dress could be critical to her success in the Season. The Cutting Edge features stunning society dresses embellished with jewels, sequins, beads and embroidery, by Hardy Amies, John Cavanagh and Victor Stiebel.
As rigorous dress codes at Ascot, Glyndebourne and Henley were relaxed, contemporary British designers were freed from dress restrictions previously dominating the Social Season A late twentieth-century mix of gentle nostalgia, parody and subversion, saw designers such as Zandra Rhodes and Elizabeth Emanuel re-working the style and image of customary Social Season dress.
The Cutting Edge merges classic tradition with radical modernity. Norman Hartnell's magnificent beaded satin dress, worn by Queen Elizabeth II at the Paris Opera, is juxtaposed with Vivienne Westwood's dramatic white organdie dress, designed for debutante Lady Bianca Job-Tyoran to wear to the 1994 Queen Charlotte's Ball; the two dresses span fifty years of society style, and reflect the diversity at the heart of British Social Season fashion.
CARL AND KARIN LARSSON:
23 OCTOBER 1997 - 18 JANUARY 1998
Should I die, which, surprisingly enough, could happen, I believe that the home will carry on lust as well, although not lust in the same way. But then it wasn't the same yesterday as today. A home is not dead but living, and ilke all ilving things must obey the laws of nature by constantly changing... if
Carl Larsson (On the Sunny Side), 1910
The first major exhibition ever held outside Sweden on the work of Carl and Karin Larsson opens at the V&A in October 1997. It focuses on the famous house they created at Sundborn in Sweden1 and its extraordinary impact on Swedish and international design over the last century.
Carl Larsson is Sweden's most popular artist. He and his wife, Karin, created a style of interior decoration recognised as quintessentially Swedish: an imaginative and innovative blend of fin de si~cle influences, including Japanese prints, Arts and Crafts ideas from Britain, and colourful Swedish folk design.
The Larssons were given a rural property in 1888. They then began a gradual process of enlargement and decoration which transformed the small, plain cottage into an elaborate blend of traditional designs from Sweden's past and strikingly modern concepts of colour, light and surface pattern. Carl and Karin created a new look, sweeping away late 19th century dark colours, drapes and clutter. The Larssons extended their ideas to every aspect of the cottage, from woven textiles to brilliantly-coloured furniture, creating an interior which although in places reminiscent of the work of Mackintosh, Voysey and Baillie Scott, was very much
The Larssons' ideas on interior design and decoration became well known through Carl's watercolours and humorous writings which were published as books, heralding the bright, sunlit interiors as a domestic ideal. Their mixture of old and new, with light and colour, became a vital element in the creation of 20th-century Scandinavian style.
The cottage, Lilla Hyttnas, rapidly turned into Sweden's most famous home and the Larssons its best-known family. The house can still be visited today, and attracts approximately 60,000 people every year.
The highlights of the exhibition are five room sets, including Carl's bedroom, the studio and the library, all created with original furniture and fittings from Sundborn. Visitors can experience life as the Larssons lived it by sitting at a reproduction table in the 'drawing room' to leaf through Ett Hem (A Home), Carl's most famous book.
Over 300 exhibits illustrate the Larsson way of life, including photographs, furniture, textiles, the now famous watercolours which first popularised the Larsson style, Karin's textiles and furniture designs and Carl's illustrated books.
The exhibition considers Sweden in the late 19th century, the Larsson way of life and design principles, and the impact their work has had on design the world over. Carl and Karin's unpretentious, family-centred home, made up of small, light rooms economically furnished but enlivened with brilliant colours, was seminal to the development of twentieth century Swedish style. With the advent in the 1960s of mass producers of Scandinavian design, Carl and Karin's innovative style has since reached a world market through the firm's international success.
COLOURS OF THE INDUS:
9 OCTOBER 1997 - 29 MARCH 1998
The first ever exhibition focusing on the exquisite and brilliantly-coloured textile traditions of Pakistan will open at the Victoria and Albert Museum in October 1997. Over 130 costumes and textiles from the 1850's to the present day will be exhibited in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the creation of Pakistan.
From beautiful woven silk and cotton dresses in vibrant reds and deep indigos, to coats lavishly decorated in gold thread, the exhibition illustrates a culture rich in its textile traditions and love of colour. Displays of shoes, embroidered hats, turbans in sumptuous silks, tobacco bags, woven shawls, animal adornments and beautifully crafted quilts provide an insight into hfe across the four provinces of Pakistan: Sindh, Baluchistan, the North West Frontier and the Punjab.
With generous loans of work from Pakistani, Japanese and British collections and many pieces from the V&A's own collection, Colours of the Indus is conceived as a journey up the river Indus from the Arabian Sea at Karachi to the northern mountain ranges of Pakistan. Folk garments decorated with ornate embroidery and adorned with beads, buttons and mirrors are seen alongside refined and exotic court costumes, to reveal a wealth of regional styles.
The exhibition is jointly curated by Rosemary Crill of the Indian and South East Asian Department and Dr Nasreen Askari, UK Co-ordinator of the Festival of Pakistan, and is designed by Carter Wong & Partners. The exhibition, with an accompanying book, is part of a programme of events taking place in Britain to commemorate the independence of Pakistan and India.
Drawn from the V&A's own collection, over thirty prints highlight the vibrant and exciting tradition of contemporary printmaking from South Asia.
Nehru Gallery: August 1997
A new display of paintings, textiles, and furniture will open in the V&A's Nehru Gallery of Indian Art including a magnificent selection of seventy miniature paintings.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Admission to the V&A costs £5.00, concessions £3.00. There is no charge for those under 18, students, pre-booked educational groups, disabled people and their carer, the unwaged (UB40 holders), V&A Patrons, Friends and American and International Friends. Entry is free between 16.30 and 17.50.
26 JUNE - 14 SEPTEMBER 1997
A spectacular tent, decked with textile panels inspired by the decorative arts of the
Mughal and Rajput traditions of South Asia, will go on show in the V&A's Pirelli Garden on 26 June 1997.
The Mughal Tent will be hung with brilliantly-coloured textile panels, each of which has been individually designed and handmade by groups of women and children from communities all over the world, from Lo~idon to Dubai, Delhi to Los Angeles, Burma to South Africa. Each group, usually comprising members of the Asian community as well as people of other cultural origins, has used museums' collections of the traditional art and design of the South Asian sub-continent as inspiration for their own, highly personal, exploration of their cultural identity.
The Mughal Tent Project grew out of the Museum's South Asian Arts Education Programme, an innovative initiative which focused on the Nehru Gallery of Indian Art in order to bring new visitors to the Museum. In 1991, Shireen Akbar, the V&A's South Asian Arts Education Officer, started introducing groups of women mainly, but not exclusively, from the Asian community into the Museum. Inspired by the Indian and South-East Asian Collection, the women formed groups to create textile panels covered with embroidery, etc.
The shape and dimensions of each panel and the dominant colour scheme of scarlet and blue were determined by imperial Mughal tents and tented enclosures, as shown in miniature paintings in the Nehru Gallery. The panels have a traditional quality but deal with contemporary themes - coming to terms with the cultural legacy of the Indian sub-continent, the experiences of migrants and immigrants, and their new identities in a multi-cultural society.
Previous small displays of the panels - at the V&A in the summer of 1993, and at centres, art galleries and museums throughout the UK, in India, in South Africa and at the European Community headquarters, attracted a great deal of attention from the general public. The project is now established in over 40 centres; more than 800 women from 9 countries have been involved so far.
Shamiana: The Mughal Tent is one of a number of events the V&A is mounting as part of the celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of India's and Pakistan's independence. It will also act as a tribute to the commitment and energy of Shireen Akbar, who sadly died in March 1997.
Shireen Akbar was awarded an MBE in the 1996 Queen's Honours List. She joined the V&A in 1991 as the Paul Hamlyn South Asian Arts Education Officer, with extensive experience of school, community and youth education, including many years working in Tower Hamlets. Shireen also played a key role in two major exhibitions in the late 1980s - Woven Air: The Muslin and Kantha Tradition of Bangladesh at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and Rickshaw Art, at the Museum of Mankind. She curated the Rickshaw Art exhibition at Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan in 1994.
From her V&A base, Shireen continued to carry out highly innovative and imaginative work in arts and community education, taking the V&A to a leading position in this field both nationally and internationally A GRAND DESIGN:
1999
A major exhibition of more than 200 works of art from the V&A will tour North America from 1997 - 1999. The exhibition, organised and toured by The Baltimore Museum of Art in association with the V&A, opens in Baltimore in 1997, travelling on to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston~ and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The exhibition will return to the V&A in late 1999, where it will celebrate the centenary of the renaming of the V&A by Queen Victoria.
MAJOR PROJECTS
5 YEAR PROJECT
The V&A is to re-present its entire run of British galleries, the most comprehensive display project undertaken at the V&A for 50 years. The 15 new galleries, 10% of the entire gallery space of the V&A will display the Museum's unrivalled collection of British design and art in a radically new fashion.
The new galleries will offer a completely different experience, allowing visitors to have a sense of involvement with the national collections of British design. Around 3,000 examples of decorative and fine art by such designers and craftsmen as Grinling Gibbons, Robert Adam, Thomas Chippendale and William Morris will be interpreted with the benefit of new research, and shown in their historical context.
5 YEAR BOILERHOUSE PROJECT
The Victoria and Albert Museum plans to enter the twenty-first century with a new building, The Spiral, designed by the Polish-born architect Daniel Libeskind. The building, sited on Exhibition Road, will provide a new entrance and orientation point for the Museum. It will give space for the display of the contemporary - showing the best of modern design and craftmanship. A new purpose-built temporary exhibition hall will be linked to the Sprial alongside an education resource centre. The distinctive concept and design will give the V&A the flexibility to show the new and diverse objects it will collect in the twenty-first century. It will also allow the Museum to provide a new and exciting information centre to guide people through the extensive collections at the V&A and, using new technologies, through the collections of the world.
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