The Victoria and Albert Museum (popularly referred to as the V&A), located in South Kensington, is the largest museum of its kind in the world. From its name, it's not obvious what this kind is – one might guess that it's all about its namesakes, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, but this isn't really the case. Before receiving its present name, it was called the South Kensington Museum, which is even less descriptive. Its original name, the Museum of Manufactures, gives you some idea of what the museum used to be about, but this has changed drastically. To resolve the question, we'll start by looking a little more closely at the Queen and the Prince.

Queen Victoria was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom in 1837, at the age of 18, and would occupy the throne for the rest of her life, which would last an additional 63 years. In 1840, she married Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (in Germany), who was her first cousin (Victoria's mother and Albert's father were brother and sister). Victoria and Albert were much devoted to each other and would produce nine children, all of whom would survive to adulthood.

Albert, unfortunately, would only survive until the age of 42, at which time he would succumb to a stomach ailment (diagnosed as typhoid fever at the time, but it may have been something more long-term, like cancer or Crohn's disease). Victoria was overwhelmed by grief, and would wear black for the rest of her life.

In the happier days of their youth, Albert was at first not as happy as he might have been. Britain by this time was a constitutional monarchy, meaning Victoria's actual governing power was quite limited. And Albert, being just the consort to the Queen, had no governing power at all, beyond whatever influence he had on his wife. This was frustrating for a man who'd been raised to become a Duke of Saxony, and he ended up occupying himself by devoting himself to civic and charitable causes, such as education reform and the abolition of slavery. In the 1840's, Albert became president of the Society of Arts, which produced annual exhibitions of its work. This led to his presiding over a much bigger international exhibition in 1851, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, a sort of World's Fair held in Hyde Park in London. Exhibitors from throughout the world were invited, with particular emphasis on the many colonies of the British Empire. A huge temporary structure called the Crystal Palace was constructed for the purpose.

Despite the predictions of many, the Great Exhibition was a resounding success, attracting more than 6 million visitors and making a profit that would be big enough to fund future projects. The idea for the first project was an obvious one: a permanent museum that would showcase the sorts of exhibits that made the Great Exhibition so popular. This museum opened in 1852 as the Museum of Manufactures, in Marlborough House, in the vicinity of Buckingham Palace, but later the same year it had to move to larger quarters at Somerset House, on the bank of the Thames. Many of the first exhibits had been purchased directly from exhibitors at the Great Exhibition. Despite the museum's name, the exhibits also included artistic and scientific ones that had little to do with industry. In 1857 the museum moved again, to a site in South Kensington that was purchased using the aforementioned profits, and it became the South Kensington Museum.

Over the ensuing decades, new objects were added to the museum's collections until it became necessary to exhibit some of them in improvised off-site locations, and it was decided to do this with the scientific exhibits, while keeping the artistic ones in the main building. This led to the eventual creation of a separate Science Museum, leaving the Victoria and Albert Museum (officially renamed at Queen Victoria's last public appearance in 1899) as essentially what it is now - a museum of applied and decorative arts and design. And sculpture. But not much ancient art, as this is mostly at the British Museum (see next page). And not much fine art, as this is mostly at the National Gallery. And not much modern art, as there are other museums for this stuff too. Anyway, you can make up your own description for the V&A after looking at the pictures below.

Like the British Museum and the National Gallery, admission to the V&A is free. The museum has a permanent collection of more than 2 million objects and covers 12.5 acres, and we didn't allocate nearly enough time to explore it in much detail (like earlier in the day, when we'd done the same thing at Kew Gardens). But we went on in and did our best with it.


In the first room, we found that "decorative arts" included the decoration of people. There wasn't too much of this – this is probably the most elaborate suit of clothing we saw:

"Applied arts" refers to art objects that have a purpose, beyond art for art's sake. Like furniture, for example:





There was also an impressive selection of ceramics on display, some porcelain and some terracotta.




While wandering around the exhibits, we kept running into urns for some reason. A common decorative accent during a certain era, perhaps. Here are some of the more interesting ones:


There were also some musical instruments on display. Again, works of art:

Eventually we found a Hall of Sculpture. The museum is supposed to have an immense sculpture collection, but we had the feeling there must have been a lot of it somewhere else, as the hall didn't seem that big. But the sculptures we did see were beautiful. Here are a few:



Another type of object we kept running into was the altarpiece. Altarpieces have a purpose, so they would have to be classified as applied art:




Next we entered a large room called the Cast Court, which was filled with sculpture, some of which we recognized. More to the point, we recognized certain works of art as being somewhere else. For example, Michelangelo's David is in Florence, Michelangelo's statue of Moses is in Rome, and Raphael's School of Athens fresco is in Vatican City (and is part of a wall in the Pope's apartments, and isn't going anywhere). Something wasn't right here. As turns out, everything in the Cast Court is a copy. The name "Cast Court" refers to the fact that most of the sculptures are plaster casts of originals located somewhere in Europe. Some were made for technical or educational purposes, and others were made to furnish the next-best thing to the originals. The museum commissioned some of them, mostly in the 19th Century, and bought others that had been made by other people. The largest cast is a copy of Trajan's Column in Rome, which is nearly 100 feet tall. The copy is too tall to fit in the court, so it was cut in half, with the two parts displayed next to each other. There are actually two rooms of Casting Court, which were opened in 1873. The rooms were popular at first, but later fell out of favor with visitors because, well, they're copies. But they've become more popular of late, as it's undeniably impressive to be surrounded by all of these works of art at once.







After leaving the Cast Courts, we discovered a courtyard in the middle of the museum. There was a café in the corner, and there were unique views of some of the interesting old buildings that comprise the museum.

We didn't have time to linger, as the museum was threatening to close for the day shortly. We went back in and found some rooms of Asian art.


One area specialized in art from India. One of the items was called "Tippoo's Tiger", which was made around 1795 for Tipu Sultan, the Muslim leader of the Kingdom of Mysore in India. Tippoo's Tiger is a mechanical creation which depicts a British soldier being mauled by a tiger. When activated, one of the soldier's hands moves, a wailing sound comes from the soldier and a growling sound comes from the tiger.


Another room displayed some large, colorful drawings which are known as the Raphael Cartoons. There are seven of them, and they depict scenes from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. They are cartoons, meaning they are drawings on paper which are meant to be used as full-size guides for artwork to be done in another medium. One use of cartoons is in the production of frescoes, but these were drawn to be used in the production (in mirror form) of tapestries. The cartoons are part of the British Royal Collection, but have been on loan to the museum since 1865 from Queen Victoria and her successor monarchs, currently Queen Elizabeth II.



After looking at the cartoons, there was an announcement that the museum would be closing in a half hour. In Europe, all visitors must be physically out of a museum building by closing time, and there was an entire floor we hadn't looked at yet. Nella didn't really have the energy to try, so she found a bench to sit on while I attacked a floor featuring metalwork exhibits. Not too many photos, and even fewer that came out decently, but here are a few:


We made our way out of the front door with a few minutes to spare, returned to the Underground station and headed for our hotel. We rested, found dinner and then rested some more. We had one more day in London, and we were going to spend it at the museum that is possibly London’s most prestigious - the British Museum.