V&A Blog

If you are passing through the museum this month, be sure to stop outside the National Art Library (NAL), as it will be your last chance to view the Commercial Graphics of the 1930s display. Jobbing Printing Display outside the National Art Library. © Idahota Ebehiwalu, courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London The display comprises items from the Jobbing Printing collection, begun in 1936 by Deputy Keeper of the Library, Philip James.

A voice is never neutral. It carries where it comes from, what it has been through and whether it has been given space to be heard at all. And it rarely stays contained within a single body. It can extend, travel and gather, held between people as much as produced by one. A shared field rather than an individual expression. The work of NYX begins precisely here.

Some commissions begin with a physical place. Others begin with an artist. A few begin with a problem so large that no single object can contain it, and the only way to approach it is through a long process of conversation, testing, and trust. Towards a Civic Museum, the stained-glass commission by Tania Bruguera for V&A East, belongs to the latter. Installed at the threshold of the museum as it opens in East London, the work is not simply an artwork placed within a new building.

Are you ready to bring your creativity to one of the most exciting design spaces in the UK? Young V&A is inviting early to mid‑career designers, studios, and collectives to apply for a six‑month public‑facing design placement within The Shed, our unique residency studio in the heart of the Design Gallery.

How would the everyday person encounter contemporary art in the 1930s? Commuters in the City were likely to pass designs by renowned artists of the day on London Transport’s innovative posters, and those outside of London could occasionally get the chance to view contemporary artworks via travelling exhibitions. ‘Grand Junction Canal’, print, by Lynton Lamb, 1938, England. Museum no. CIRC.147-1939.

As Bangladesh enters a new democratic age after what has been widely reported as the first free and fair election held in the country for almost two decades, Meneesha Kellay, Lead Curator of an upcoming exhibition focussed on South Asia looks back at a visit to a region redefining itself. Over a year after the gen Z uprising toppled the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina, remnants of the movement are visible across Dhaka, the country’s capital.

Students on the V&A / RCA History of Design Postgraduate Programme can enrich their learning experience by contributing to live museum projects. In this series, we share some of the exciting discoveries made by students who helped to rehome the National Art Library’s large collection of children’s books when it moved to V&A Storehouse earlier this year. When we think of a book, we tend to picture its cover design, the printed pages inside, or the story it tells.

Robberies in museums are any museum curator’s nightmare. And this is unfortunately what happened on 20th November 2024 when three gold boxes from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection were stolen from the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris. A year later, thanks to an extensive police investigation led by the French Police, two of the three boxes were miraculously recovered, although damaged. The investigation is still ongoing for the third box.

Last year I catalogued MA/120, a series of files from the V&A Archive documenting concerts held at the museum from 1950 until the early 1980s. As I worked on the project I got completely immersed in the world of the concerts, which was full of interesting stories and characters. In this blog post I’ll be sharing some of my favourite finds from cataloguing the concert files. In June 1945, V&A Director Leigh Ashton wrote to Alfred Clark at the HMV Gramophone Company with an unusual request.

Students on the V&A / RCA History of Design Postgraduate Programme can enrich their learning experience by contributing to live museum projects. In this series, we share some of the exciting discoveries made by students who helped to rehome the National Art Library’s large collection of children’s books when it moved to V&A Storehouse earlier this year.