Designing the V&A

The building of the Victoria andAlbert Museum, begun in 1857, is the most elaborately designed and decoratedmuseum in Britain. This book is the first to consider the V&A as a work ofart in itself, presenting drawings, watercolours and historic photographsrelating to the museum's 19th-century exteriors and interiors. Much of this visualmaterial is previously unpublished and is outside the canon of Victorian artand design.The V&A's first Director, HenryCole, conceived the museum's building as a showcase for leading Victorianartists to design and decorate. This book reveals for the first time the waysin which Cole's expressed policy to 'assemble a splendid collection of objectsrepresenting the application of Fine Arts to manufacture' was applied to thefabric of the building, as he engaged leading painters such as FredericLeighton, G.F. Watts and Edward Burne-Jones, as well as specialists indecoration such as Owen Jones and Morris and Company, to decorate and designfor a building raised by engineers using innovatory materials and techniques.This book represents a fascinating, untold chapter in the history of British19th-century art, design, architecture and museums, and provides an essential key to understanding theevolution of the museum's early collections and identity.Julius Bryant is Keeper of Word andImage at the Victoria and Albert Museum, with responsibility for Paintings,Prints, Drawings and Photographs, the National Art Library and the Archive ofArt and Design. From 2005 to 2017 he was also the V&A's lead curator forexhibitions on James 'Athenian' Stuart, on William Kent and on John Lockwood Kipling(all in collaboration with the Bard Graduate Center, New York City, asco-curator and senior research fellow). He is author of Alec Cobbe: Designs forHistoric Interiors (V&A, 2014), editor of Art and Design for All: TheVictoria and Albert Museum (V&A, 2011) and co-editor of Word & Image:Art, Books and Design from the National Art Library (V&A, 2015).