The legacy of the Great Exhibition of 1851
The V&A’s founding mission was to educate and inspire British design and manufacturing. In the 19th century it was the first museum in the world to use gas lighting, and the first to have an in-house restaurant. Today the collection holds more than 2.8 million objects spanning fashion, textiles, furniture, ceramics, glass, interiors, jewelry, metalwork, books, art, photography, theater and performance. It is home to the world’s oldest dated carpet (1539), the first commercially produced Christmas card (1843) and Britain's most famous bed (the Great Bed of Ware, made in the 1590s and mentioned in Shakespeare’s play “Twelfth Night”). World-class historic collections span South and East Asian cultures, its paintings galleries hold works by Constable and Turner and The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert collection contains spectacular decorative objects, from enamel miniatures to jeweled snuff boxes.
Alongside scholarly and historical programming, the museum is known for its world-leading contemporary exhibitions spotlighting fashion and pop cultural icons such as Alexander McQueen, Kylie Minogue and David Bowie. The V&A expanded its remit with a Chinese outpost in 2014, V&A at Design Society, Shekou, and in Scotland in 2018 with V&A Dundee. The V&A Photography Centre at South Kensington became the UK’s largest suite of permanent galleries dedicated to photography on completion in 2024. Young V&A, dedicated to inspiring under-14s opened to acclaim in east London in 2023, and two new V&A museums in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park are scheduled to open in 2025.
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