Victoria and Albert Museum

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in the United Kingdom is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects.

The Victoria and Albert Museum collection is housed across six sites in the United Kingdom. This "family of museums" comprises;-

V&A South Kensington, the museum's original London site which covers 12.5 acre in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London and has over 145 galleries.

Young V&A, opened as the V&A Bethnal Green Museum in 1872, became the Museum of Childhood in 1974 and then the Young V&A in 2023.

V&A Dundee, opened in September 2018

V&A Wedgwood Collection, the former Wedgwood Museum in Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent acquired in 2014

V&A East Storehouse, opened in June 2025

V&A East Museum, opened in April 2026.

The sites share a common website which also hosts the "Order an Object" service allowing members of the public to view individual objects at V&A East Storehouse or at South Kensington.

The museum collection spans 5,000 years, from ancient history to the present day, and includes works from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia plus art from South Asia, China, Japan, Korea and the Islamic world. The East Asian collections are particularly strong in ceramics and metalwork, while the Islamic collection is amongst the largest in the Western world. The museum also holds one of the largest collections of post-classical sculpture in the world. Its collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture being the largest outside Italy, however, the art of antiquity in most areas is not the V&A's focus. The holdings of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, jewellery, silver, metalwork, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints, drawings and photographs are also among the largest and most comprehensive in the world.

The museum can trace its origins to the Government School of Design, established in 1832, and until 1983, the museum remained directly controlled by a government department, initially the Board of Education and eventually the Department of Education and Science. It is now a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. As with other national British museums, entrance is free.

Overall, the V&A is one of the world's largest museums.

History

Origins

The Victoria and Albert Museum has its origins in the Government School of Design, established by the British Government in 1832 at Somerset House in London for "the direct application of the Arts to Manufactures". The School of Design was created because the government feared that the poor quality of art education in Britain was restricting the growth and export potential of British industry. The school included a museum which, alongside contemporary artworks, held plaster casts of ancient sculptures and of features from classical buildings to use as teaching aides. At the French Industrial Exposition of 1844 in Paris, £1400 was spent on items for the museum.

In January 1852, Henry Cole was appointed head of the Government School of Design and announced his intention to transform it into an institution that would "elevate the Art Education of the whole people, and not merely ... teach the artisans, who are servants of the manufacturers." Prince Albert, who had worked with Cole on the Great Exhibition, supported this approach and offered the use of a royal mansion, Marlborough House on The Mall, for this new Museum of Manufactures, which would include the Design School.

With a parliamentary grant of £5000, Cole purchased several exhibits from the Great Exhibition of 1851 for the museum's collection. These included a large number of textiles from India and several works by Augustus Pugin. In 1853 the museum attracted 125,000 visitors and was re-named the Museum of Ornamental Art.

Move to South Kensington

By February 1854, discussions were underway to transfer the museum to Brompton on the edge of central London. There, as a legacy of the Great Exhibition, Prince Albert was planning a group of institutions for the improvement of industry by the study and application of the arts and sciences. Dubbed "Albertopolis" by the British press, the project included what eventually became the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and Imperial College London.

Given the run-down nature of Brompton, Cole persuaded the authorities to rename the area South Kensington to make it more attractive to potential visitors. In 1855, the German architect Gottfried Semper produced a design for the South Kensington site, but it was rejected as too expensive. In 1857 the museum, which included scientific displays, did move to South Kensington where, at the suggestion of Prince Albert, it was re-named the South Kensington Museum.

The South Kensington site was then occupied by a large, dilapidated property, Brompton Park House. In 1856, that building was extended by the "Brompton Boilers". These starkly utilitarian iron galleries were described as "hideously ugly" by The Builder magazine but did include a refreshment room, making the museum the first in the world to provide a catering service for visitors. The "Brompton Boilers" were dismantled in 1867 and their structural iron-work reassembled in East London to build the museum's Bethnal Green branch. The Bethnal Green branch, which is now the Young V&A, then housed the museum's collection of shoes, boots, animal products, butterflies and moths.

The first building to be erected that still forms part of the South Kensington site was the gallery built to house the art collection donated by John Sheepshanks. Built in 1857 on the eastern side of the central garden of Brompton Park House, its architect was the civil engineer Captain Francis Fowke.

John Charles Robinson became curator of the museum in 1853 and in his ten years in the role made annual trips to France, Italy and Spain. He purchased treasures that had become available on the art market due to social upheaval, revolutions or the disestablishment of religious institutions. In this way the museum virtually cornered the European market in medieval sculpture and assembled the greatest collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture anywhere outside of Italy plus significant collections of ivory and ceramics.

Official opening

The museum's official opening by Queen Victoria was on 20 June 1857. In these early years the practical use of the collection was very much emphasised as opposed to that of "High Art" at the National Gallery and of scholarship at the British Museum. George Wallis (1811–1891), the first Keeper of Fine Art Collection, passionately promoted the idea of public art education through the museum collections. This led to the original School of Design component of the museum becoming part of the National Art Training School, which would eventually become the Royal College of Art. As such, for the first fifty years of its existence, the museum was an integral part of Britain's national system of art education.

During 1858–1859, Fowke designed the rooms that are now form the tapestry and picture galleries. Gas lighting allowed late-night opening to be introduced in 1858 as Cole believed that this would help "to ascertain practically what hours are most convenient to the working classes". Displaying both collections of applied art and science, the museum aimed to provide educational resources and thus boost productivity in industry. Throughout the 1860s to the 1880s the scientific collections was moved from the main building to various improvised galleries west of Exhibition Road. In 1893 the "Science Museum" began to come into existence when a separate director was appointed for the scientific collections.

Expansion in 1860s

By June 1862, the North and South Courts, directly behind the Sheepshanks Gallery, were opened and remain in use today to host temporary exhibitions. An ambitious decoration scheme was developed for these areas. Between 1862 and 1871, for the upper level of the South Court, a series of thirty-five, over life-size mosaic figures depicting famous European artists was created. Known as the 'Kensington Valhalla', these have now been either moved to other areas of the museum, lost or put in storage.

Also overlooking the South Court were two large semi-circular frescoes, the Leighton Frescoes. Commissioned by Cole with subjects previously suggested by the late Prince Albert and designed by Lord Leighton they were titled Industrial Arts as Applied to War and Industrial Arts Applied to Peace. To the east of these were additional galleries, the Oriental Courts, decorated by the architect Owen Jones. Completed in 1863, none of his decoration remains.

The Secretariat Wing was built in 1862 on the southeast side of the site. It now houses the museum's executive offices and boardroom and is not open to the public.

The last works designed by Fowke were the buildings on the north and west sides of the garden. The building west of the garden, completed in 1863, included the staff residences. The building on the north side of the garden included three new refreshment rooms, the ceramics gallery (now the silver gallery), access to the science and art schools and a lecture theatre on the top floor. The Ceramic Staircase, completed in 1871, in the northwest corner of these buildings was designed by F.W. Moody and has architectural details of moulded and coloured ceramics, many made using innovative techniques by Minton, Hollins & Co. For many years, the façade of this buildings was the main entrance to the museum. Its bronze doors, designed by James Gamble and Reuben Townroe, have six panels depicting individual scientists and artists and now lead into the cafe. Godfrey Sykes designed the mosaic in the pediment of the North Façade commemorating the Great Exhibition. The mosaic is flanked by terracotta statue groups by Percival Ball. This building replaced Brompton Park House, which was then demolished.

Henry Cole Wing built

Between 1867 and 1872, the architect Henry Young Darracott Scott designed, to the northwest of the garden, the five-storey School for Naval Architects (also known as the science schools) which, eventually, became the Henry Cole Wing of the museum. Scott's assistant, James William Wild designed the staircase that rises the full height of the building, which now houses the V&A prints collection and the RIBA Drawings and Archives Collections.

Various designers were responsible for the decoration of the Henry Cole Wing. The terracotta embellishments were the work of Godfrey Sykes, although sgraffito was used to decorate the east side of the building designed by F. W. Moody. The wrought iron gates made in 1885 were designed by John Starkie Gardner.

Creation of the Cast Courts

Scott also designed the two Architectural Courts, now the Cast Courts (1870–73) to the southeast of the garden. These vast spaces comprise two large, skylighted rooms three storeys high, plus a smaller corridor gallery. Building the rooms, with ceilings 83 ft in height allowed the museum to bring together plaster casts previously displayed elsewhere in the building. For example, the cast of the Portico of Glory from the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral had previously only been displayed in sections in different parts of the building while the classical and Renaissance casts were kept in a corridor. Both courts initially contained original works and photographs alongside the plaster casts, with European subjects in one court and works from India in the other.

The courts now house hundreds of plaster casts of sculptures, friezes and tombs. One room is dominated by a full-scale replica of Trajan's Column, cast in two parts. The other includes reproductions of various works of Italian Renaissance sculpture and architecture, including a full-size replica of Michelangelo's David. Replicas of two earlier Davids by Donatello and Verrocchio, are also present. The two courts are divided by corridors on both storeys, and the partitions that used to line the upper corridor, now room 111, were removed in 2004 to allow the courts to be viewed from above.

The final part of the museum designed by Scott was the Art Library and what are now the sculpture galleries on the south side of the garden, built in 1877–1884. The exterior mosaic panels in the parapet were designed by Reuben Townroe, who also designed the plaster work in the library. Sir John Taylor designed the bookshelves and cases. This was the first part of the museum to have electric lighting. These works completed the northern half of the site, creating a quadrangle of buildings around the garden, but left the museum without a proper façade.

Cromwell Road façade built

In 1890 the government launched a competition to design new buildings that would give the museum an imposing front entrance along Cromwell Road and Cromwell Gardens. This competition was won, in 1891, by the architect Aston Webb. Queen Victoria returned to lay the foundation stone of the new building on 17 May 1899. It was during this ceremony that the change of name from "South Kensington Museum" to "Victoria and Albert Museum" was made public. Queen Victoria's address during the ceremony ended: "I trust that it will remain for ages a Monument of discerning Liberality and a Source of Refinement and Progress."

Source and attribution

Adapted from “Victoria and Albert Museum” by English Wikipedia contributors. Main paragraphs and sections are retained; tables, reference markers and technical markup are omitted. This is an encyclopedic adaptation, not a personal review. Original revision and contributor history ↗. Text is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗. Check current visitor access, tickets and transport with the relevant operator.