Latest Victoria and Albert Museum News

Guess what? As you know, we love a day out at DOUK – and today, we went out for one! Well, sort of. We were invited to an exclusive unveiling of the brand-new spring exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. The Future Starts Here is the museum’s new, and experimental, exhibition opening in May of 2018. Featuring over one hundred objects and gadgets that are set to enhance the human experience in the future – or in the not so distance future.

Showcasing a month-long Christmas spectacular! This December is a huge month for Christmas and music at the V&A. Featuring choirs, candlelit concerts, pop-up performances, film screenings, a spectacular Christmas tree, decoration making workshops and more, the festive period will be celebrated through music from opera to Christmas number ones. This year’s theme is inspired by the current major V&A exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics.

A pineapple fibre clutch-bag, Emma Watson’s Calvin Klein dress made from recycled plastic bottles and a cape of cockerel feathers are amongst the 300 beautiful, intriguing and unsettling objects from the V&A’s next major fashion exhibition.

As part of an event on Friday 20th October, British fashion designer, Phoebe English, will be the featured designer at Fashion in Motion. Held in the Raphael Gallery, the four free shows will present pieces from English’s collections from the past 6 years and will feature a pop up shop, comprising of a selection of garments with special pieces designed specifically for the V&A.

Definitely an underated material wood-n't you agree?

Today the V&A announces that it has acquired one of the pink hats worn at the Women’s March attended by an estimated 500,000 people in Washington on 21 January 2017 – the day after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The pink hat was knitted by Jayna Zweiman, the Los Angeles-based co-founder of the Pussyhat project, which called on people to turn the Women’s March into a ‘sea of pink’ and create a strong visual statement of solidarity for women’s rights in protest against the Trump administration. The hat is now on display in the V&A’s Rapid Response Collecting gallery exploring how current global events, political changes and pop cultural phenomena impact, or are influenced by, design, art, architecture and technology.

For one day only, the V&A will exhibit the infamous 1966 Jules Rimet Trophy, as part of a weekend of special programming to celebrate and mark the 50th anniversary of England’s legendary football World Cup win in the 1960s.

A generous grant of £1.75M ($2.5M) has been awarded to the V&A,  by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to launch a new V&A Research Institute (VARI). The grant will support a five-year programme of activities that will take the Museum’s thriving research culture into a new phase, making its collections and expertise more visible and connecting them more fully with both academic partners and practitioners of art and design. VARI will host collaborative research and residency projects, expand the Museum’s programme of teaching and training and generate further print and digital publications including a refreshed version of the V&A Online Journal.

Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design Part of the V&A Engineering Season

Sponsored by Agent Provocateur and Revlon

3 October 2015 – 31 January 2016

From 8 February - 21 September 2014

The Design Fund to Benefit the V&A has this year enabled the Museum to acquire five contemporary design projects ranging from a series of vessels made of natural polymers to a 3D printed gun. They will all go on display at the V&A for the first time during London Design Festival (14-22 September).