Victoria and Albert Museum

has its origins in the Great Exhibition of 1851. With Henry Cole as its first director, and known as the Museum of Manufactures, the museum first opened to the general public in May 1852 at Marlborough House. By September the collection, which included scientific displays, had been transferred to Somerset House. Several of the exhibits from the opening Exhibition were purchased by the museum to form the kernel of the V&A collection. to transfer the museum to South Kensington and change the name to the South Kensington Museum. In 1855 the German architect Gottfried Semper, at the request of Cole, produced a design for the museum, but it was rejected by the Board of Trade as too expensive.…

The South Kensington building has a complex history, with numerous piecemeal additions by different architects. When in 1857, the museum moved to its present site the land was occupied by Brompton Park House. That building was extended, most notably by the "Brompton Boilers", starkly utilitarian iron galleries with a temporary look that were later dismantled and used to build the V&A Museum of Childhood. The first building to be erected that still forms part of the museum was the Sheepshanks Gallery. Built in 1857 on the eastern side of the garden, its architect was the civil engineer Captain Francis Fowke. During 1858–1859, Fowke designed the next major expansion, the galleries that now…

ballgown by Oscar de la Renta displayed in August 2024)]] The V&A holds the national collection of performing arts in the UK, including drama, dance, opera, circus, puppetry, comedy, musical theatre, costume, set design, pantomime, popular music and other forms of live entertainment. The Theatre and Performance collections were founded in the 1920s when private collector, Gabrielle Enthoven, donated her collection of theatrical memorabilia to the V&A. In 1974 two further independent collections were compiled to form a comprehensive performing arts collection at the V&A. The collections were displayed at the Theatre Museum, which operated from Covent Garden until closing in 2007. Theatre and…