Albert Museum Research Articles

Future Occurrence of Climate-Induced Extreme Heat Events in Museum Galleries: A Modeling Study under Two 21st Century Climate Scenarios at V&A South Kensington

ABSTRACT Museums, including the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), are committed to achieving ambitious sustainability goals, focusing on adapting their buildings and operations to adapt to climate change. This paper supports this ambition by developing a method to model internal gallery conditions under future climate projections, using a subset of environmental data from 2015 to 2023 from the V&A South Kensington galleries. The linear regression model, built on this data, predicts scenarios based on Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), specifically RCP2.6 and RCP8.5. Preliminary findings indicate little change in gallery closure frequencies in an RCP2.6 scenario compared to the current 0–10 closures per year. Conversely, the RCP8.5 scenario projects an almost tenfold increase in closure days due to high temperatures. This approach, implementable in the R programming language, provides a valuable tool for museums to inform and achieve their sustainability action plans amidst the challenges posed by climate change.

Импортные узорные ткани Белореченского могильника в коллекции Государственного Эрмитажа

Purpose of the study: The attribution and dating of figured textiles from the Belorechensky burial ground (North Caucasus), study of manufacturing techniques, reconstruction of textile patterns and study of historical aspects related to the problem of the supply and existence of these silks in the region. Research materials: The collection of archaeological materials from the Belorechensky burial ground (collection of the Oriental Department of the State Hermitage) including 22 figured textiles (52 inventory no.), textiles from collections of other institutions (Metropolitan Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, etc.). Results and scientific novelty of the study: Of the 87 examples of textiles, embroidery, needlework, and threads, 22 examples are related to silk figured textiles. According to the technique, they are divided into velvets, damasks, lampases, and taffeta with pattern weft. Most of the textiles can be associated with the Syro-Egyptian weaving tradition of the 14th-15th centuries. However, there are several examples of Chinese and Italian production, and one damask, the technical features of which make it related not only to Italian and Syro-Egyptian, but also to early 16th century Safavid textiles. In this regard, the dating of the mounds from which these textiles originate was examined and clarified; issues of trade in the Northern Black Sea region were touched upon, as well as non-economic ways of the appearance of high-status imported products.

Reimagining food systems and food futures: a visual approach

The aim of this article is to reveal some of the different points of view, priorities and visions for the future of food systems which were on display in FOOD: Bigger than the Plate, a temporary exhibition which ran in the Victoria and Albert (V & A) Museum, London, UK, from 18th May 2019 until 20th October 2019. A qualitative study was undertaken and a visual autoethnographic method was adopted to gather data for this research. To reimagine new food futures means adopting new narratives. This paper offers a visual journey into some of the potential possibilities and options for ensuring food systems become more resilient. Whilst the FOOD: Bigger than the Plate exhibition was about illustrating how a more sustainable, just and delicious food future could be achieved, as the findings show, there are deeper meanings attached to the images of the exhibits. What I believe the images of the FOOD: Bigger than the Plate exhibition do, is to challenge us to think about food and our relationships with food. What is revealed are the possible ways in which we can reimagine the future of food if we are prepared to be challenged in our thinking.

The cloth pass and soft glitch

In this article, sound artist Julie Rose Bower examines the relationship between the Foley ‘cloth pass’ and the ‘fabric sounds’ autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) trigger. Starting with Serres’s sensory appraisal that ‘the world is a mass of laundry’ the tactile qualities of cloth are proposed as a key component in accounting for the ‘felt rather than heard’ status of Foley sound. Writing from a practitioner perspective, Bower argues for textile manipulation as a form of embodied sound design and cloth sounds as a curiously generative media object. Through theorizing developments in the scope of attention within screen cultures, Bower develops a speculative ontology of soft glitch and conceptualizes a politics of folded listening. Alongside accounts of sound practice from industry Foley artists Vanessa Theme Ament (Die Hard, Edward Scissorhands), Joanna Fang (Sony PlayStation) and from her own ASMR work using costume and textiles (ASMR at the Museum for the Victoria and Albert Museum [V&A]), Bower argues for cloth sounds as transcendent cyberfeminist technique.

Illumination Unbound: The Victoria and Albert Museum Cross and Its Parchment Miniatures

Illumination Unbound: The Victoria and Albert Museum Cross and Its Parchment Miniatures

Mexican Lacquer at the Victoria and Albert Museum: Analysis of Three Bateas

This study investigates the materials and techniques used in three Mexican platters, or bateas, from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection. Our analytical approach included the use of non-invasive techniques, such as infrared reflectography, scanning X-ray fluorescence, and digital microscopy, which informed limited but targeted sampling. Traditional pigments were identified, including indigo, carbon black, red lead, lead white, and orpiment, and materials such as dolomite, gypsum, ochres, and clay were also found. A red organic dye was seen but could not be identified. The stratigraphy of the objects was also investigated. The condition of the objects was also evaluated, and the results will be used to inform future conservation decisions. The findings add to the published knowledge of the materials and techniques of early colonial Mexican objects and can be of use in future investigations, facilitating exchanges and collaborations focused on this type of objects, which are rare in UK collections.

Mopa Mopa and Barniz de Pasto at the Victoria and Albert Museum: Recent Developments

This paper summarises the research carried out so far on barniz de Pasto objects from the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and outlines future areas of development for our collection of Indigenous lacquer from Latin America. The V&A was the first UK public institution to identify objects decorated with barniz de Pasto within its collection. Two of these were acquired in 2015 and 2018; others had entered the collection between 1855 and 1902 but were recognised as barniz de Pasto only after 2018. The acquisition in 2015 of a cabinet marked the start of a research campaign to understand the materiality and context of all the museum’s barniz de Pasto objects. The analytical techniques used included X-radiography, polarised light microscopy and digital microscopy, Raman microscopy, X-ray fluorescence (point and scanning), chromatography (py-GC–MS and LC–DAD–MS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray micro-computed tomography. Unexpected discoveries were made along the way, including the characterisation and documentation of mercury white (mercury(I) chloride, or calomel) used as a white pigment, a world first. Gel-based cleaning methods were used to remove a non-original, discoloured, natural varnish covering nearly the entire surface of one of the objects, and the recent overpaint on its lid, revealing original surfaces which had been repaired and drastically repainted in the second half of the twentieth century.

Introducing a Risk-, Value- and Collection Lifetime-Based Lighting Policy at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

ABSTRACT In 2001, the conservation department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, implemented a risk-based lighting policy for highly light-sensitive collection objects that has been influential across the museum sector and informed the rotation of these objects across its permanent galleries and touring exhibitions. As the V&A grows into a family of museums – opening three new sites between 2023 and 2025 – and with ambitious exhibition and display programmes, the challenge facing the museum is to continue to balance the care of collections, increase access to them, and keep resource requirements sustainable. To address this challenge, the conservation department developed a new risk- and value-based policy to manage highly light-sensitive collections on display in its permanent galleries. This policy builds on the earlier risk-based approach to lighting policies and introduces value assessment, microfadometry and collection lifetimes as tools for optimal collections management to the wider organisation.

STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF ENGLISH PICTONYMS

The article is devoted to the study of structural features of English pictonyms — proper names of paintings. Pictonym is a subclass of imageonym, which is a subclass of artionym, which, in turn, is a subclass of ideonym. Proper names of paintings are an under-researched area of onomastics that attracts the attention of many scientists because proper names play an important role in the spiritual development of society and have their own unique features that distinguish them from other onyms. The purpose of the article is to examine the structural division of English pictonyms. The object of the research is English pictonyms. The subject of the study is the peculiarities of the structural characteristics of English pictonyms. The research material is a selection of 500 English pictonyms from the catalogues of the National Gallery located in London, the Royal Gallery located in Buckingham Palace (London), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the National Gallery of Art located in Washington, the Yale Center for British Art in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, and specialised art websites. During the study, a descriptive method was used to analyze the actual material, as well as a statistical method to count the number of English pictonyms analysed. Based on the general classification of M. M. Torchynskyy, pictonyms were divided into three groups: simple, complex and compound. It was found that the vast majority of the analyzed units belong to the compound type and structurally represent a group of word combinations. Phrases, combined abbreviations, word combinations, and sentences are followed by quantitative indicators. A smaller number of simple pictonyms, of which affixational and non-affixational ones are distinguished by their structural features. The smallest part consists of complex names, among which we are able to identify proper composites, affixational composites, and abbreviations.

Feasts of Raw Meat

Russell Harris is a free-lance translator currently living in Amsterdam. He also works under the auspices of the Lafayette Project and it was while cataloguing a group of photographs of Ras Makonnen for the Victoria and Albert Museum that he happened upon the early reports of Abyssinian culinary habits which had horrified readers in the past. He decided to investigate these, and here exposes some misconceptions which in his view flawed the reports and exaggerated the barbaric aspects of the practices.

A Recently Identified Barniz Brillante Casket at Bateman’s, the Home of Rudyard Kipling

A casket held at Bateman’s, Rudyard and Caroline Kipling’s home in Sussex—now a National Trust property—was recently recognised as a barniz brillante work. Objects made of barniz brillante, a technique featuring the Indigenous American material called mopa mopa, are relatively rare and have only sparingly been studied using scientific analysis techniques. A collaboration between the National Trust and the Victoria and Albert Museum has produced scientific evidence which will be invaluable in the study and the understanding of this type of object. The scientific analysis of the casket was conducted exclusively in a non-destructive and non-invasive manner, to preserve the integrity of the object which is in very good condition. The Bateman’s casket is characterised by a dark underdrawing, made with a material which is transparent in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Most of the areas decorated with silver leaf have tarnished due to the formation of what is likely to be silver chloride. This study represents a significant step towards the comparative scientific study of barniz brillante objects in other collections, which in turn will make it possible to suggest a timeline for their manufacture, and even identify workshops.

The Conservation and Display of a Traditional Korean Hwarot Panel with a Discussion of Purple Gromwell Dye

ABSTRACT This paper covers how, as conservation professionals, we promote and contribute to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collections through the understanding of historic materials and techniques that go into the making of complex objects. The conservation of a Korean embroidery panel originally found on an hwarot or bridal gown demonstrates this approach. The collaboration of both conservation disciplines and Korean practitioners enabled the work to be meaningful and informative. The decision to remount the hwarot panel as a robe structure, as it had been previously disassembled for the foreign export market, was agreed upon, as was the retention of the lilac repairs. The use of natural dyes to create a rainbow of coloured silks found in the embroidery brings its own problems, especially as purple gromwell is a dye less known in Western culture. The replica robe considers the historical context of the panel and can be re-utilized for subsequent mounting.

Gender and Queerness at the Victoria and Albert Museum: A Case of Museum Activism?

Gender and Queerness at the Victoria and Albert Museum: A Case of Museum Activism?

Scholarly Rigour in Gelatin Silver: K. A. C. Creswell’s Photographs of Islamic Architecture

This article critically considers the aesthetics, process, and distribution of K. A. C. Creswell’s photographic collections of Islamic architecture. Creswell (1879–1974), a British university professor in Cairo from 1931 until his death, is considered one of the founders of the field of Islamic architectural history. As a young scholar in the 1910s, he took thousands of photographs of Islamic architectural sites, mainly in Egypt, which he then duplicated and deposited into major institutions of art historical study: Harvard University, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Villa I Tatti, the Ashmolean Museum, and the American University in Cairo. While he strove to objectively document historical sites through photography, Creswell also inadvertently captured aspects of everyday life in the city of Cairo. These slips of modernity in his photographs highlight how he ‘personally re-created’ distinctive study images that are not solely documents of architecture. His choice of camera, lens, angle, shutter speed, lens filter, cropping, and printing generated an identifiable photographic style that marked these images within the field of art historical study. These five photographic collections, spread across three continents, thus exhibit how photography facilitated the incorporation of the field of Islamic art into the wider field of art history.

IMPACT OF DIGITAL ART ON DESIGN OF ONLINE MUSEUM: USER-CENTERED DESIGN, NARRATIVE DESIGN, AND INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY

This research aims to explore the means by which digital art presented in online museum exhibitions will contribute to an improved visitor experience of the museum exhibition. Theoretical and practical research methods are used, namely, analysis of scientific and professional literature on the impact of digital culture on museum exhibits, analysis of design analogs of online museums. Based on the research analysis, the influence of digital culture on art museums was established, which allowed them to go beyond physical spaces, display digital art and implement virtual reality technologies. The cases of the Museum of Modern Art, TATE, the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as China's Palace Museum and Shaanxi History Museum have demonstrated the significant benefits of integrating digital culture into the art world. The use of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) in digital museum exhibitions was analyzed. It is substantiated that the impact of digital culture on art museums is evidence of the importance of digital technologies in the design of online museums. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the design principles of digital art exhibitions of online museums have been further developed in the work, which allows them to reach a wider audience of visitors and improve the aesthetic perception of museum expositions by viewers. The results of the study can be used in their introduction into the modern practice of designing museum.

What value in preserving a fragment of building? A sociological enquiry into the museum preservation of Robin Hood Gardens

ABSTRACT There continues to be much debate as to whether to preserve buildings, and this is particularly pertinent to post-war architecture, especially in the UK. This paper further explores the issue by concentrating on the acquisition of a fragment of Robin Hood Gardens by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Smithsons’ key work was deemed a failed social experiment in its listing verdict, and the acquisition of the fragment during demolition sparked controversy when exhibited at the 2018 Venice Biennale. Devoid of its context in an exhibition setting, the fragment of building questions the applicability of traditional conservation values, particularly those relating to age or architectural value. This paper aims to demonstrate the value of taking a more sociological approach to this dilemma. It uses theories of collective memory, specifically Halbwachs and Bachelard’s variations, to explore multiple interpretations of the fragment’s physicality. Three frameworks have been chosen for analysis: the changing social housing rhetoric, its listing campaign, and finally the present, a speculative section on what the current interpretations of the past indicate for the future. Through this chronological analysis it is concluded that the Estate’s physicality is reduced to a semantic contribution, representative of our current crisis of collective memory.

HUMAN CREATIVITY DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC: THE PROJECT PANDEMIC OBJECTS AS AN EXAMPLE OF SOCIOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON DESIGN

This article proposes to look at how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the valuation of the world of material culture, and how the subject itself can become an inspiration to describe this particular time. Naive anthropomorphism, and thus criticism of the view of the superior role of human, although present for many years, has taken on a new meaning at this particular time. As a theoretical framework for presenting the proposed issues, I adopt the reference to the interpretation of the concept of an “object” present in the social sciences and humanities, as well as the role of designers and the explication of design in the literature. The picture will be complemented by a reference to the Pandemic Objects project, implemented in 2020 by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, United Kingdom.

Powstanie i cechy palety barw Kangxi wucai 康熙五彩 oraz falangcai 珐琅彩 – spotkanie kultur a estetyka podwójnej obcości. Część I: Problematyka terminologii i badań nad porcelaną eksportową

This essay focusses on issues connected with research into the history of exported porcelain from the Far East. To this end, it discusses the literary context of the expressions “the family of roses” and “the family of greens,” and also the genesis, main features, and current terminology relating to the two most widespread techniques of glaze-painting decoration (Kangxi wucai 康熙五彩 and falangcai 珐琅彩). The article discusses the most important techniques of decoration that preceded the development of the Kangxi wucai palette and the relations between technological development and the taste of the period. It also indicates the important items in Polish collections, especially in the National Museum in Gdańsk. From the holdings of this museum, the author selects a plate decorated with wild geese on Lake Taihu. An analysis of the plate – with regard to the technology of its production, aesthetics, and iconography – is the main element in the article. Polish items are presented in the context of important European collections: the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Musée Guimet, the National Museum in Oslo, and the Museo Correr in Venice. The author formulates a new term in art theory: the aesthetics of double foreignness. It makes it possible to give a name to a phenomenon that develops in the process of reception and analysis of objects produced in one developed and isolated civilization, intended for and commissioned by a second civilization.

Francis Williams: Shedding light on the production, materials and techniques of the portrait of a Jamaican scholar

AbstractThe Victoria and Albert Museum holds an important portrait of the Jamaican scholar and writer Francis Williams (c.1692/97–1762), portrayed as a scholar in his study. It is believed to have been painted around 1745 by an unknown artist, but the circumstances of its production are unknown. A technical examination of the painting was performed using x‐radiography and infrared reflectography (IRR), macro x‐ray fluorescence scanning (XRF), digital microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy‐dispersive x‐ray spectroscopy (SEM–EDX) and reflectance imaging spectroscopy in the short‐wave infrared (SWIR). XRF, IRR and reflectance imaging spectroscopy in the SWIR revealed the distribution of inorganic pigments including lead white, earth pigments, Prussian blue, vermilion, orpiment (or pararealgar) and bone or ivory black. Pentimenti and a different sketched landscape were observed in the IRR images, highlighting changes in the final composition. Three‐dimensional (3D) digital microphotography provided additional historical and contextual information through the observation of book titles and details. High‐resolution digital imaging complemented analytical data. Results of the technical examination revealed the material composition and the development of the painting, contributing to shed new light on the production of the portrait, the history and significance of the portrait.

TWO LEAVES WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT SCENES IN THE CONTEXT OF CURRENT STUDIES OF MODELS AND COPYING PROCESSES IN RHENO-MOSAN ART OF THE 12th CENTURY

Th e Library of the University of Liege (Université de Liège. Biblio-thèque, Ms. 2613) and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Victoria and Albert Museum, Ms. 413) have two leaves created c. 1150–1170 and produced in the Meuse region. Although the question of the purpose of the leaves is under discussion, these two oeuvres of Romanesque book illumination have not yet received special scholarly attention. Th e leaves have a similar layout: each side contains two compositions based on stories from the Book of Genesis, and there are no inscriptions or biblical quotations. Th e Old Testament episodes included in the pictorial program of the leaves do not form a consistent narrative cycle. Th us, the scenes of the sacrifi ce by Cain and Abel and the murder of Abel by Cain in the leaf from the Victoria and Albert Museum are followed by an episode of the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek. Th e leaf from Liège begins with the scene of the sacrifi ce of Isaac. Th e cycle does not contain a number of scenes with a fairly consistent iconographic tradition (for example, the story of Noah). Such narrative heterogeneity can be interpreted through the prism of the purpose of the pictorial series. Th e Sacrifi ce of Abel, the Gift s of Melchizedek and the Sacrifi ce of Isaac by Abraham are mentioned in the Eucharistic Canon of the Sacramentary of Pope Gelasius I and have been used in iconographic programs since the era of early Christianity as the main liturgical prototypes. Th e back of the leaf from the Library of the University of Liege contains another subject which alludes to the typological parallelism of the Testaments – the Blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh by Jacob. Th e designated subjects can be found in a number of contemporaneous works of decorative and applied arts and book miniatures of the Rhine-Meuse region, which are compiled on the basis of typological logic in the arrangement of stories. Th e selection of stories, as well as the stylistic and iconographic analy-sis of the range of oeuvres with typological iconography, suggests that the leaves could have been fragments of a model book and probably served as models in the process of the spreading of the compositional and iconographic techniques which were characteristic of the Rhine-Meuse region.