Daily: 10.00 – 17.45
Friday: 10.00 – 22.00
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London, SW7 2RL
The closest stations are :
The Victoria and Albert Museum first opened in 1852 as the Museum of Manufactures at Marlborough House and then transferred to Somerset House. At the time, the collections consisted of applied art and science. The Museum's founding principles were to instruct the public on all matters relating to good design.
In 1854, it was renamed South Kensington Museum. In 1857, the new buildings supposed to house the museum, including the Sheepshanks Gallery, were completed and Queen Victoria officially opened the new museum on 20th June 1857. Over the years, a great number of new galleries were added to the Sheepshanks Gallery. In the 1880s, Aston Webb was appointed architect for the new main building. Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone in May 1899. It was then that the museum became the Victoria and Albert Museum. The opening ceremony for the Aston Webb building by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra took place on 26 June 1909.
Today, the museum's collections are split into four curatorial departments :
You can also visit the Young V&A, in Bethnal Green, which displays objects by and for children.
In September 2018, the V&A Dundee opened in Scotland. It's the first design museum in Scotland.
Tropical Modernism was Britain's unique contribution to International Modernism – a colonial architecture, developed by British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, against the background of anti-colonial struggle in India and West Africa in the late 1940s. This exhibition looks at the colonial origins of Tropical Modernism in British West Africa, and the survival of the style in the post-colonial period when it symbolised the independence and progressiveness of newly independent countries like India and Ghana.
Showcasing over 300 rare prints from 140 photographers, Fragile Beauty is a major presentation of 20th- and 21st-century photography on loan from the private collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish. Selected from their collection of over 7,000 images, the photographs (many of which will be on public display for the first time) are era-defining images which explore the connection between strength and vulnerability inherent in the human condition.