Designing The V&A:: Museum as a Work of Art (1857 1909)

The first book to consider the V&A as a work of art in itself and to present a wide variety of visual material relating to the Museum's 19th-century interiors, much of it previously unpublished. The building of the Victoria and Albert Museum, begun in 1857, is the most elaborately designed and decorated museum in Britain. This book is the first to consider the V&A as a work of art in itself, presenting drawings, watercolours and historic photographs relating to the museum’s 19th-century exteriors and interiors. Much of this visual material is previously unpublished and is outside the canon of Victorian art and design. The V&A’s first Director, Henry Cole, conceived the museum’s building as a showcase for leading Victorian artists to design and decorate. This book reveals for the first time the ways in which Cole’s expressed policy to ‘assemble a splendid collection of objects representing the application of Fine Arts to manufacture’ was applied to the fabric of the building, as he engaged leading painters such as Frederic Leighton, G.F. Watts and Edward Burne-Jones, as well as specialists in decoration such as Owen Jones and Morris and Company, to decorate and design for a building raised by engineers using innovatory materials and techniques. This book represents a fascinating, untold chapter in the history of British 19th-century art, design, architecture and museums, and provides an essential key to understanding the evolution of the museum’s early collections and identity. Julius Bryant is Keeper of Word and Image at the Victoria and Albert Museum, with responsibility for Paintings, Prints, Drawings and Photographs, the National Art Library and the Archive of Art and Design. From 2005 to 2017 he was also the V&A’s lead curator for exhibitions on James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, on William Kent and on John Lockwood Kipling (all in collaboration with the Bard Graduate Center, New York City, as co-curator and senior research fellow). He is author of Alec Cobbe: Designs for Historic Interiors (V&A, 2014), editor of Art and Design for All: The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A, 2011) and co-editor of Word & Image: Art, Books and Design from the National Art Library (V&A, 2015). The building of the Victoria and Albert Museum, begun in 1857, is the most elaborately designed and decorated museum in Britain. This book is the first to consider the V&A as a work of art in itself, presenting drawings, watercolours and historic photographs relating to the museum’s 19th-century exteriors and interiors. Much of this visual material is previously unpublished and is outside the canon of Victorian art and design. The V&A’s first Director, Henry Cole, conceived the museum’s building as a showcase for leading Victorian artists to design and decorate. This book reveals for the first time the ways in which Cole’s expressed policy to ‘assemble a splendid collection of objects representing the application of Fine Arts to manufacture’ was applied to the fabric of the building, as he engaged leading painters such as Frederic Leighton, G.F. Watts and Edward Burne-Jones, as well as specialists in decoration such as Owen Jones and Morris and Company, to decorate and design for a building raised by engineers using innovatory materials and techniques. This book represents a fascinating, untold chapter in the history of British 19th-century art, design, architecture and museums, and provides an essential key to understanding the evolution of the museum’s early collections and identity.