The collections which underpin the ethos of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) came into being at a crucial period for the visual arts. Because of the Great Exhibition and subsequent world fairs there was a dramatically increased awareness of artistic traditions across the globe; because of industrialisation there was a new sense of the importance of design for mass production; and, partly as a result of both of these factors, there was an emergent Arts and Crafts Movement which set out to reintegrate the visual arts. Hierarchies which distinguished between fine and applied art, between painting on plaster, wood, cloth or on the pages of manuscript books, were implicitly regarded as artificial (and unsustainable) construction of relative value. If there is a museum anywhere in the world which can claim to be the first embodiment of this inclusive, antisegregationist approach, it is the V&A.
It is thus a matter of some moment that, as reported in your November issue (No.108, p.15), the chair of its trustees is interested in “sending much of its fine art to galleries such as the Tate and National Gallery”. It is unfortunate that more space could no have been devoted to explaining the rationale behind this idea. Let us hope if it is to be pursued that there can be a sustained exploration of the implications. On the face of it, though, and not having heard the arguments debated, the potential losses seem like to be far greater than any gains.
The V&A is effectively, faute de mieux, our national art museum, which is to say objects are not there (as are many in the British Museum) because they have been perceived to be antiquities or ethnography. It is the place where painting and sculpture share galleries with furniture, tableware and tapestries. It is thus also the place where such things as painted tapestry cartoons are most logically displayed. Equally, although it does not happen much in practice because of the departmental structure, it has the resources to show together and prompt reflections about the different (or, indeed, often surprisingly similar) artistic traditions of the Eurasian landmass. European and East Asian ceramics are there to be juxtaposed. Painting on a wide variety of supports, of numerous genres (from landscape to icons) and for widely different functions, are there (by virtue of the institution’s history) to be compared as “art”.
Now all of the above may sound as though it is simply nostalgic, even supportive of “Victorian values”. It is not. Much of what I have said remains potential; it has never been properly realised. Why should it be realised in the future? One answer is that hiving off parts of this whole can be seen to equate to a segregation which implies, for example, that European paintings (on panel, paper and canvas only?) best keep company with others of their ilk, rather than mixing it with painting on glass or pottery, or indeed with painting from India or China. In other words, rather than a pluralist, “multicultural” museum, the V&A becomes a disintegrated one.
Sandy Heslop
School of World Art Studies and Museology
University of East Anglia, Norwich
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'V&A: back to basics'