VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

Description

Essentials about the Victoria and Albert Museum in brief

With a collection of over 4.5 million objects, the Victoria and Albert Museum is the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design. The museum, usually just called “V&A” for short, is located south of Hyde Park in the South Kensington district and forms the so-called “Exhibition Road” with several other museums in the immediate vicinity, such as the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum.

The history of the Victoria and Albert Museum

Named after Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, the museum was founded as a collection of plaster casts, engravings and other exhibits from the 1851 World’s Fair. Together with patron of the arts Henry Cole, Prince Albert created a concept for a museum that would show the application of art to craft. The museum’s collection grew rapidly through study objects and donations, so that the V&A had to expand into new buildings several times during its history.

The collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum

Today, the exhibitions of the Victoria and Albert Museum cover an incredible 5.1 hectares in 145 galleries. The collections show 5,000 years of history of arts and crafts from all continents of the world through thousands and thousands of exhibits: ceramics, glasses, metal objects, clothing, carpets, jewelry, furniture, musical instruments, sculptures, prints, paintings, photographs and much more. Especially the collections of exhibits from the Italian Renaissance and from East Asia are among the largest and most significant in the world.