The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A), London, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The V&A is located in the Brompton district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in an area that has become known as "Albertopolis" because of its association with Prince Albert, the Albert Memorial and the major cultural institutions with which he was associated. These include the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Royal Albert Hall. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Like other national British museums, entrance to the museum has been free since 2001.
The V&A covers 12.5 acres (51,000 m2) and 145 galleries. Its collection spans 5,000 years of art, from ancient times to the present day, from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. The holdings of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, silver, ironwork, jewellery, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints and printmaking, drawings and photographs are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world. The museum owns the world's largest collection of post-classical sculpture, with the holdings of Italian Renaissance items being the largest outside Italy. The departments of Asia include art from South Asia, China, Japan, Korea and the Islamic world. The East Asian collections are among the best in Europe, with particular strengths in ceramics and metalwork, while the Islamic collection is amongst the largest in the Western world.
Victoria and Albert refers to Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
It may also refer to these things named in honour of the couple:
As well as the following television series:
See also
Albert Museum may refer to:
The Victoria and Albert Museum Spiral (or V&A Spiral, or The Spiral) was a proposed extension to a 19th-century London building that is home to the world's largest museum of decorative arts. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind and the mathematician and engineer, Cecil Balmond. The museum chose the design over seven others in competition in 1996 but, after much controversy and failing three times to attract the necessary funding, the project was abandoned in 2004.
When the design was chosen in 1996, Liberskind was relatively unknown, but in 1999 he won international acclaim for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and his master plan for the World Trade Center site in New York has made him a household name there.