Victoria and Albert Museum

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Scope of Collection: Collection-level records:

Collection overview (Collection development policy)

ASIAN DEPARTMENT
The Asian Department was created in 2001 by bringing together the Indian and South-East Asian and East Asian collections with the Museum’s holdings of material from the Middle East, giving the Museum a coherent strategy for all its Asian collections for the first time. The collections, which together number about 150,000 objects, are extremely broad in scope chronologically, geographically and in terms of media. They include paintings in oil, watercolour and ink on canvas, paper and cloth; prints and photography; sculpture and carvings in stone, metal, wood, ivory, jade and other hardstones; metalwork and jewellery; arms and armour; dress, textiles and carpets; ceramics and glass; furniture and lacquer.
The cultures of Asia are of great historical depth, while at different times and in different ways they have also both influenced, and been influenced by, western art and culture. Today, Asia is undergoing rapid change and is of great economic, political and cultural significance. The V&A thus has an important role to play in helping to interpret both historical and contemporary Asian culture to a growing and changing audience of national and international visitors.
The V&A’s world-class Asian collections, together with those of institutions such as the British Museum and the British Library, make London one of the most important centres for the appreciation and study of Asian art and culture outside the various countries of origin. The V&A’s strengths lie in the decorative arts and design history, complementing the archaeological focus and numismatic strengths of the British Museum, and the British Library’s focus on manuscripts and the printed book. There is considerable consultation with other institutions in London and throughout the UK as we continue to develop our holdings with a national framework in mind.
We continue to build and develop our collections through the acquisition of objects that illustrate and document the history and practice of art and design throughout Asia. In spheres where designers are active in international arenas, we work in consultation and collaboration with the V&A’s other curatorial departments. For all our acquisitions we pay close attention to provenance and follow UNESCO protocols.
South, South-East Asia and the Himalayas
The collections from the South Asian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) range from ca. 3,000 BC to the present and number ca. 60,000 objects. The Museum also holds rich collections from the Himalayan region (Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet ca. 1,500 objects) and from most regions of SouthEast Asia (Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia, ca. 3,500 objects).
The South and South-East Asian collections have their origins in the Museum of the East India Company.
In the second half of the 19th century the ‘India Museum’ was transferred to the newly established India Office and its broadly based historical collections were developed with a particular focus on arts, manufactures, and economic products, largely through acquisitions from international exhibitions. By the 1870s they included an unrivalled assemblage of contemporary decorative arts from all of what was then considered ‘Greater India’, i.e. those areas of South-East Asia and the Himalayan regions that had historically been influenced by India, or which were governed by British India. In 1879 the India Museum was dispersed, and its holdings came to South Kensington, where they joined the collections that had been developed at the Museum since initial acquisitions were made at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
When the V&A’s collections were rationalised in 1909 and divided into material-based departments, the South Asian collections continued to be known as the ‘India Museum’ and were displayed in 20 rooms of the Eastern Galleries on the west side of Exhibition Road. In the mid-1950s, the Eastern Galleries were demolished, and the collection’s displays, now much reduced in scale, were moved to the main V&A building. The broad pattern of acquiring both historical and contemporary sculpture, painting and decorative arts and design has continued to this day resulting in a collection that is one of the largest and most important in the world.
The V&A’s collection of Mughal court arts includes some of the most important pieces in the world and the collection of South Asian textiles (ca.10,000 items) is the largest and most important outside the region itself. A few very significant artefacts from the courts of Tipu Sultan and Maharaja Ranjit Singh make the V&A an important centre of study in both these fields. The collections of South Asian paintings and works on paper (ca. 5,000) and sculpture (ca. 5,000) are, along with those of the British Library and the British Museum respectively, among the finest in the western world. The V&A’s distinctive strengths also include furniture (ca. 300), musical instruments (ca. 200) and objects relating to the performing arts. The collection is strong in metalwork, arms and armour, and decorative arts of the second half of the 19th century, especially items made for exhibition purposes, but does not comprehensively cover earlier periods. The Museum has smaller collections of works by 20th – and 21st-century artists and designers, (both those based in the Indian subcontinent and of South Asian origin working in the UK) and a significant holding of 20th-century and contemporary Indian film posters – a genre which is important to an understanding of the modern and contemporary visual world of South Asia.
In addition to the ca. 60,000 objects from South Asia already cited, the archive collection of 19th-century (predominantly architectural site) photographs of South Asia, (ca. 20,000 prints and a large collection of negatives), along with photographic documentation of items of Indian art elsewhere in the V&A, is of enormous value.
The Himalayan collection consists primarily of sculpture, tangkas (painted scrolls), and ritual and domestic vessels, but also includes important items of dress, personal ornament, arms and armour.
From South-East Asia, the V&A holds a significant collection of 19th-century material from Burma (Myanmar) and further strengths include a good collection of textiles and the UK’s most important collections of early sculptures from Indonesia, Thailand, Burma and Cambodia, and of metalwork from mainland South-East Asia.
In the case of the historical collections, we aim to acquire selective and securely provenanced examples of sculpture of the Gupta and medieval periods; court art from the 16th to 19th century; paintings from both religious and secular traditions, early examples of South Asian textiles (including trade textiles); examples of 18th – and 19th-century furniture, metalwork and jewellery; and objects made for everyday use. One particular aim is to acquire objects that will enrich rotation displays in the South Asia Gallery in areas where there are few examples in the collection, such as Sultanate, Deccani and pre-Mughal Hindu painting. Opportunities will also be sought to acquire notable examples of significant genres of art from particular traditions, such as the Jain religion, where these are not well represented in the collection. We also hope to strengthen the Himalayan collection by the judicious addition of examples of early painting (12th-14th centuries) and sculpture, and of early 20th-century textiles and jewellery which represent the traditional culture of the region. Regarding South-East Asia, we aim to build on our holdings of sculpture, painted works, textiles and jewellery.
In the case of modern and contemporary works, we aim to increase our South Asian holdings in all media to reflect changes in society, technology and the use of raw materials. Recent years have seen the rapid development of a South Asian fashion industry, much of it based on a revival and elaboration of indigenous types of dress. We aim to collect and document key examples of modern and contemporary clothing, fashion and textiles. We also aim to acquire contemporary paintings, drawings and prints and examples of craft and product design relating to the domestic interior. With artists and designers whose approach is self-consciously international, we collaborate and consult with the V&A’s western collections. We are, for example, working with colleagues in the Photography Section of the Word and Image Department on a project to acquire contemporary South Asian photography. Regarding the Himalayas and South-East Asia, we plan to focus on the major strengths of the collections by acquiring selective examples of contemporary paintings and decorative arts, particularly textiles and jewellery.
East Asia
The collections from East Asia consist of ca. 68,000 items from China, Japan and Korea. They include objects from China (ca. 18,200 items) ranging from archaeological material of the 4th millennium BC to 21st-century items, Japanese material (ca. 48,850 items) primarily from the 16th century to the present, and Korean material (ca. 950 items) from the Three Kingdoms period (57BC-668AD) to the present.
The Museum has collected material from East Asia since its inception. Important donations and bequests during the course of the 20th century – including from the Salting, Eumorfopoulos, Hildburgh, Alexander and Le Blond collections – coupled with determined and dedicated collecting by individual curators, led to major strengths. It was not until 1970, however, that the V&A’s East Asian collections were brought together under the care of specialist curators. These now constitute the largest and most extensive museum collection of East Asian ceramics (totalling ca. 9,000 items) and East Asian furniture and textiles (over 4,000) in the UK, while the collections of Chinese export art and Japanese prints (over 30,000), inrō (ca. 570 items) and lacquer (ca.2,000 items) are among the finest in the western world. Following the generous gift from Edwin Davies, CBE, the V&A now has the largest and most comprehensive collection of Japanese cloisonné enamels of any museum in the world, an area in which we continue to actively acquire. Further strengths are Chinese metalwork and carvings (ca. 1,500 items), Japanese netsuke (ca.860 items) and swords and sword fittings (over 5,000 items). The V&A has also built up a strong Korean collection despite the scarce availability of Korean artefacts during the colonial period (1910-45), Korean War (1950-53) and military regimes. Excellent ceramics, textiles, metalwork, furniture and lacquer have been acquired through generous donations and strategic purchases. We continue to collect historical material selectively to augment and enrich our existing collections and to allow for the rotation of sensitive material such as paintings, textiles and dress.
Since 1980, there has been a consistent focus on modern and contemporary collecting. Chinese objects have been collected in a conscious effort to map the period and now constitute an impressive group perhaps unmatched outside China. We continue to actively collect contemporary Chinese art and design, particularly in the spheres of ceramics and dress. Japanese studio crafts are another particular strength, and our collection continues to grow. We also actively collect contemporary Japanese dress, interior and product design. Contemporary Korean ceramics and works in other media have also been steadily acquired since the establishment of the Korean Gallery in 1992, the first of its kind in London. Since the appointment of a full-time specialist curator for Korea in 2012 we have been able to pursue a more proactive collecting strategy aimed at the acquisition of objects that reveal innovative use of traditional cultural heritage and that showcase the dynamic contemporary craft and design scene in Korea, particularly in the fields of textiles and dress, ceramics, lacquer, metalwork and paper. We work closely with the other curatorial departments of the Museum in the acquisition of works by East Asian designers active in international arenas.
Middle East
The V&A holds over 18,000 items from the Middle East in the Islamic period. Until 2002, when staff with relevant expertise were appointed to the Asian Department, this world-class collection remained divided among the Museum’s materials-based departments. Transfer of the Middle Eastern collections to the Asian Department’s care has been carried out in tandem with gallery development and other projects and is now well advanced.
The importance of the V&A collection in the field of Islamic art from the Middle East lies partly in its size and quality but also in the early date at which the collecting process began. The V&A was the first institution in the world to form a systematic and purposeful collection of Islamic art, the founders of the Museum seeing it as a key source for the reform of British design. Objects were first acquired by purchase from the European market and from international expositions and then, from the 1860s, by sending agents into the field. The foundation of the outstanding Iranian collections, for example, was the acquisition of pieces for the Museum by Sir Robert Murdoch Smith in Iran in the 1870s and 80s. The Museum also received major bequests from private collectors such as George Salting. Collecting continued on a less intensive scale after World War I, with a significant spate of acquisitions in the 1980s, when a number of major items were purchased at auction.
In date, the collections begin with the rise of Islam in the 7th century. They are strongest in their representation of Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Iraq, but also include objects from Spain under Muslim rule, North Africa (Morocco to Libya), the Caucasus republics, and Afghanistan and the former Soviet Central Asia, most notably Uzbekistan. The collections include holdings of ceramics, textiles, metalwork and woodwork that are remarkable for their size and range, and the ceramics collection is internationally the most important and comprehensive of its kind (3,500 objects and ca. 8,000 sherds). It is particularly strong in Iranian wares and tiles of all countries. The textiles collection is of equally substantial range and importance (ca. 3,600 items) while the metalwork collection, which includes vessels, jewellery, and arms and armour, is also of world importance. The woodwork collection has areas of significance such as Mamluk carved wood. There are also smaller but significant collections of carving in ivory, rock crystal and stone, which include the unrivalled Fatimid rock crystal ewer. The arts of the book and graphic arts have not generally been a central concern of the Museum, but some areas of the collection, such as the holdings of Iranian architectural drawings from the 19th century, are of great importance. The Museum also has important holdings of architectural casts and one-for-one copies of 17th-century tilework from Isfahan, made in 1876.
Collecting of Middle Eastern material falls into two categories. On the one hand, we seek to augment the historical collection by acquiring in fields not adequately represented. On the other, we have begun to collect modern and contemporary art and design from scratch.
In terms of our historical collections, there are significant omissions. For instance, we wish to build on our good collection of metalwork, by acquiring objects made before the 13th century and, in the area of non-Iranian metalwork, after the 16th century. We also aim to collect items that illustrate production methods that are specific to our region and relevant to our collections and that have wider social or art historical meaning. Another issue to be addressed is the skewing of our 18th and 19th-century collections towards tradition and away from modernity and we have begun to collect items from this period that show a full range of themes, both modern and traditional, and that can be seen as the forerunners of art and design in the 20th century.
In collecting the 20th and 21st centuries, we seek items that reflect both the major currents in art and design in the region as well as political and social life more generally. Another major concern is the way in which contemporary artists and designers are inspired by Islamic tradition. This is the theme of the Jameel Prize, a biennial international award and, along with other contemporary works, we aim to acquire pieces from the Prize exhibitions that are produced by artists and designers from the Middle East.
In making 20th- and 21st-century acquisitions, the Asia Department works with colleagues within the Museum and with other national and regional institutions. The Museum’s collection of contemporary photography from the Middle East, for example, is held by the Photography section of the Word and Image Department, but it was formed with our assistance and the co-operation of the British Museum, with most of the acquisitions generously funded by The Art Fund
DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE AND DIGITAL DEPARTMENT
The Design, Architecture and Digital Department (DAD), formed in 2015, is the youngest of the V&A’s collecting departments. DAD collections encompass industrial, product, furniture and digital design, architecture and urbanism.
In its collecting, DAD seeks to engage with the work of the contemporary creative industries and reflect the concerns of a changing society. DAD’s collecting priorities are to consider design within the context of society, to document important global shifts in the practices and processes of design and show connections between the designed world and current socio-political concerns. DAD’s collection is international, showing the global circulation of objects from production to consumption, and the impacts of globalisation on labour, how things are made and the environment. It is diverse and inclusive, reflecting multiple voices and viewpoints (of gender, age, race, class, sexuality and ability), and scales and modes of practice, from the DIY to the mass-produced.
DAD’s emphasis is primarily on contemporary collecting. However, where appropriate, to develop the collections, it also collects historical material. DAD shares responsibility for 20th– and 21st-century furniture and product design with Furniture, Textiles and Fashion (FTF). DAD includes the Designs section, which is responsible for the collection of design drawings and models. The Designs collection ranges from the 14th-century to the present day and includes the collection of architectural drawings and models. The Designs section is matrix-managed with WID, in whose stores the Designs collection is located.
DAD is the lead department for the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership, initiated in 2001, which offers access to two world-class architectural collections via the Architecture Gallery, the Architecture Display Gallery and the Study Room. The DAD team also developed ‘Rapid Response Collecting’, an acquisition strand that is reactive to international events, and enables the collection and immediate display of objects that articulate important moments in contemporary design and manufacturing.
The subject areas covered by DAD are not exclusive of one another or defined by medium or geography, and DAD curators work across the wide field of design to explore relevant, contemporary issues and new practices. DAD curators collaborate with colleagues in other departments also collecting contemporary material. Digital design (as process, interface and object), for example, is central to all areas of contemporary art and design collected by the Museum. DAD, in its collecting work, therefore overlays and complements the collecting strategies of other departments.
In addition to collecting in accordance with the priorities outlined above, the development of DAD’s collection also seeks to collect in support of other activities in the museum, including displays and exhibitions, FuturePlan gallery projects, and V&A East.
A history of contemporary collecting
Contemporary collecting has been at the heart of the V&A’s mission since its first director Henry Cole founded the Museum in 1852 to promote economic growth in Britain through design and to showcase new products, exhibiting contemporary objects alongside historical ones. However, for the next 100 years, the museum’s resources were concentrated mainly on building up historical collections and there was no sustained museum-wide effort to make late 19th– and 20th-century collections representative (most departments had an unofficial ‘fifty-year rule’ against purchasing recent objects). The exception was the Circulation Department, which operated from 1909 until closure following government cuts in 1977, which collected contemporary objects for temporary exhibitions and an extensive touring programme to regional museums, art schools, galleries and libraries.
In 1975, then director Sir Roy Strong allocated a special fund to all departments to collect post-1920s objects and, on the Circulation Departments demise, Keepers took an active role in ‘strengthening the museum’s representation of twentieth-century design’ in preparation for a designated Twentieth Century Gallery. From 1982-1986 the V&A hosted the ‘Boilerhouse’ project, operated independently by the Conran Foundation, which explored current manufacturing in contemporary exhibitions, and collected contemporary objects before the project broke away (taking its collection with it) to become the Design Museum.
In 1989, when the Board of Trustees allocated half of the museum’s annual purchase grant to 20thcentury objects, the centrality of collecting contemporary design was reasserted in an attempt to reconnect with Henry Cole’s founding vision for the museum, as well as widen the museum’s base within the creative industries and serve a younger audience, providing inspiration for all. In 2002, a new Contemporary Team was established to present an active, innovative and inter-disciplinary programme of displays, installations, events and exhibitions, including the monthly Friday Late evenings, and in 2007 the Porter Gallery became the hub of a designated contemporary programme.
In 2012, the Contemporary Team was restructured and the following year a collections-based section within an expanded Furniture, Textiles and Fashion (FTF) department was established: the Contemporary Architecture, Design and Digital (CADD) section. This reorganisation sought to embed the museum’s contemporary activities even further within the collections and engage in new ways with the world of contemporary architecture, design, manufacturing and digital design. In 2015, this became the Design, Architecture and Digital Department (DAD), a collections department, with a clear mandate for the contemporary.
Collecting Design
Since its inception as a department in 2015, DAD has made a number of industrial and product design acquisitions ranging from lighting to mobile phones, personal computers to smart thermostats and drones. These acquisitions show important instances of mass manufacture, innovative design practices and new processes of production and consumption.
There are examples of mass-produced objects in many of the V&A’s collections, including Ceramics and Glass, Metalwork, Furniture and Woodwork, as well as Asia. However, it has not been the remit of any department to focus on serially produced objects, particularly not object types, such as electronics and lighting, that sit outside of a purely material and geographic focus. As the consumption of our core object types and materials moved in the 20th century to mass-produced objects, and as the design professions developed objects powered by batteries, electricity and petrol, the V&A’s collection lost its connection to contemporary design practice and the consumption patterns of wider society.
Throughout the 20th century, the majority of the V&A’s industrial design objects were acquired through the Circulation Department, in particular following the Second World War when developments in manufacturing methods and the scale of production, and with that the role of the designer, altered drastically. Objects in this field include, for example, injection-moulded chairs and vacuum-formed crockery. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, the museum also acquired examples of industrial design from the Council of Industrial Design through the gift of works by the winners of the Design Centre Award. These include washing machines, lighting, gardening tools, small electronics and products designed for the office environment. When the Circulation Department closed in 1977 these objects were dispersed across other collecting departments and the coherence of this collection was lost.
When the new Twentieth Century Gallery opened in 1992 the curators included types of industrial design not previously collected or displayed in a permanent gallery context, including stereo equipment and household appliances. However, the focus waned once the gallery project was completed and therefore the collection is patchy and does not reflect changes in manufacturing and consumption of the last 30 years.
Collecting Architecture
In 2001, the V&A entered into a collaboration with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) known as the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership. The Architecture Partnership provides public access through the Study Rooms, the Architecture Gallery and the Architecture Display Gallery to two world-class collections. The bulk of the RIBA’s drawings are stored at South Kensington, though they remain a separate collection from the V&A’s collection and are looked after by the RIBA’s team of curators and conservators. The RIBA’s architectural archives, photographs and books are stored and accessed at Portland Place and at an off-site storage centre.
In 2015, with the creation of DAD, responsibility for the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership (and therefore for the management of the shared spaces of the Architecture Gallery and Architecture Display Gallery) was transferred to the department. The museum restated its commitment to its architectural collections, and introduced a new emphasis on urbanism and interest in the role architecture plays in shaping society. The Designs section was moved from the Word and Image Department to DAD, though the collection – which includes the collection of architectural drawings, which is one of the designated national collections – is housed in the WID stores and continues to be matrix-managed with WID.
DAD curators liaise closely with the RIBA as part of the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership to ensure that collecting by either party does not infringe on the remit of the other institution, and to ensure that potential donations or purchases find the most appropriate home. Architectural archives have traditionally been collected by the RIBA rather than the V&A, except in some cases where the individual’s practice has also extended to other areas of design, or where the archive has not fallen within the RIBA’s collecting remit. In some exceptional cases, and in consultation with the RIBA, the V&A has collected specific architectural archives. It is expected that the acquisition of architectural archives will remain an exceptional occurrence.
Architecture has been collected from the earliest days of the Museum in the form of architectural drawings, models, photographs, plaster casts and original building fragments. A number of the Museum’s architectural holdings derive from the collection of the Architectural Museum, founded in 1851, which was intended to be the ‘National Museum of Architecture’. It was resident at the South Kensington Museum from when the latter opened in 1857 until 1869, where its casts, photographs and original fragments complimented the South Kensington Museum’s collection of ‘Construction and Building Materials’.
In 1869, the Architecture Museum (renamed the Royal Architectural Museum) moved to separate premises, but when it closed permanently in 1916, the bulk of its collection of casts and original fragments was given to the V&A, where the items were dispersed into the various departments. Architectural collections at the V&A have always been held across the departments, depending on their material (e.g. plaster models in Sculpture; wooden models in Furniture; ironwork in Metalwork; drawings and mixed-media models in Word and Image). Architecture is still collected across other departments in the museum as well as DAD (for example, architectural fragments in FTF and SMCG; posters in WID; designs for theatres in T&P; models in Asia) and the Architecture section therefore liaises closely with those departments as appropriate.
Collecting Digital Design
Since its establishment in 2015, digital design has been part of the collecting remit of DAD. In the 21st century, it is vital to collect digital design to understand its impact on design and society today, in the recent past and into the future. Digital design consists of but is not limited to: product design, software and physical computing; systems and industrial design; web design and social media; interaction, interface and information design; videogames and communications design; new media and computer programming. Digital design works across both the physical and digital domain, and intersects with other forms of design, for example, architecture, textiles and ceramics, furniture and fashion, among others.
The presence of networked technologies, such as computers, smartphones and the internet, has transformed the ways in which design is produced, applied and disseminated. The rise of design that is born digitally or mediated through digital means has had a significant impact on public life and culture, and DAD seeks to acquire objects that reflect this.
Digital design works between the physical (computer terminals, personal devices such as the iPhone) and the abstract (the internet, data, digital media, software and applications). DAD’s digital design collection will work to make the intangible and immaterial (that which we cannot immediately touch or see) tangible through objects that show evidence of, or make present, the existence of a digitally enabled and mediated world. This may be through collecting the work of artists and speculative designers that surface challenges around digital design or collecting user-generated design.
The museum has a long history of engaging with and collecting digital design. Digital work is also collected by the digital art section in WID, and hardware, electronic devices and computing are also collected by the Furniture and Woodwork section in FTF, and Metalwork section in SMCG, and the Asia Department. The Museum of Childhood has also collected a small number of digital objects, including games consoles and videogames. From the early 2000s, WID have collected the work of digital art practitioners, documenting computer-generated design and art from the 1950s onwards. Holdings include works on paper, books, catalogues, archival material and ephemera, as well as a growing number of born-digital works. The acquisition of the Computer Arts Society Collection and the Patric Prince collections brought national significance to the V&A’s holdings of digital art.
As designers increasingly work with digital tools, digital collecting is important for all departments and sections within the museum. For example, the collection of tools such as AutoDesk’s ‘AutoCAD’ computer aided design software will enable our Designs and Architecture collections to be better contextualized within contemporary digital practice.
Rapid Response Collecting
In 2014, Rapid Response Collecting was launched by the Contemporary Architecture, Design and Digital (CADD) section as a new acquisitions activity, and since 2015 has been the responsibility of DAD. It is a reactive mode of collecting that enables the acquisition and immediate display of designed things that articulate important moments in the recent history of design and manufacturing.
Rapid Response acquisitions are brought into the museum at the time when they are the subject of public and/or critical discussion. Standing as evidence of social, political, technological and economic change, these objects expand the definition of design and further public understanding of the role it plays in contemporary society. Acquisitions to date include a 3D-printed firearm which changed public understanding of distributed manufacturing, a smart thermostat designe

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