Legacies of the Victoria and Albert Museum
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), founded in 1852, is the world’s largest museum of art, design and performance and includes a sizeable textile and fashion collection. The museum has substantially influenced other museums worldwide. The EU-funded INTERWOVEN project detailed the impact of the V&A during the first century of its existence, particularly on the National Museum of Decorative Arts in Madrid. The study also contributed to a new understanding of the many collectors, art dealers, curators and advisors involved in developing the V&A textile collection. Finally, the research detailed the importance of early terminology used to describe and contextualise textiles. “One of the project’s main results has been a better understanding of the effects of the V&A’s collection policies in terms of Spanish textiles,” says Dr Lesley Miller, project coordinator and Senior Curator of Textiles and Fashion at the V&A. Collecting practices For instance, during the 19th century, V&A collecting policies emphasised aesthetically and technically innovative design. The project revealed that certain collectors and art dealers cut up historic textiles in order to distribute pieces among various collections. This and other early collecting practices are now illegal under UNESCO agreements, and new policies reflect this modern viewpoint. Yet, the effects of historic V&A collecting were positive because textiles that would otherwise have been destroyed during 19th and 20th century wars were preserved. The V&A archive similarly holds correspondence from institutions destroyed during World War II, such as the Textile Museum of Germany (Krefeld). INTERWOVEN, like all Marie Curie programme projects, also conducted a researcher training programme, which included acquiring laboratory skills, for example, in the use of scanning electron microscopes, as well as training to use the museum’s database. Hence, the study both drew upon and contributed to database records at the V&A. Details of the collection The V&A collection is incompletely documented. Many items had never been photographed. Furthermore, museum records often lack information regarding provenance, the history of where an object was made and how it came to the museum. The project researcher restored knowledge of how items were produced via scientific analysis of their dyes and metal threads. The work substantially improved knowledge of the museum’s collection, which would not have been possible with the museum’s own resources. Analysis also contributed new ideas about the broader – non-local – importance of the textile industry during the Middle Ages and early modern period. “Historical textiles have not received the same scholarly attention across disciplines as other artefacts,” says Dr Miller, “and their study could shed light on trading and colonial connections and technological transfer across Europe, the Mediterranean and beyond.” The project additionally yielded a lively blog, explaining how to analyse textiles and how they were collected at other times in history. It also hosts four case studies about the roles and effects of various types of textiles in the V&A collection. The project-organised conference compared British and Spanish collecting practices. INTERWOVEN deepened understanding of the effects of historic collecting policies. Furthermore, the upgraded information about the V&A collection will contribute to displays and public education for generations to come.
Keywords
INTERWOVEN, museum, V&A, textiles, Victoria and Albert Museum, art and design, textile collection