The Victoria and Albert Museum

Subsequent to my post of a couple of days ago, I am pleased to say that my trip to London yesterday did in fact result in a museum trip. However, we didn't go back to the British Museum, instead heading to South Kensington to the Victoria and Albert. It wasn't even my idea! Just one of the many many reasons my boyfriend is perfect (vom).

Anyway, the V&A definitely didn't disappoint! I've never ever been before, and the only thing I was really excited about was seeing the Veroli Casket (a 10th century Byzantine ivory casket with an extremely interesting decorative programme that I studied as part of my special subject this term) so had no idea what to expect, but the galleries were pretty impressive!

Even the outside is beautiful!
We were lucky that we were visiting close enough to Christmas to see the amazing decorations that they had up in the entrance halls. They were made of glass and lights, and were incredibly striking.

 

Just when you thought amazing ceilings couldn't get any better!

The rest of the galleries continued to satisfy my love of good ceilings and nice layouts. A special shout out has to go to the bizarre but brilliantly impressive jewellery gallery, which unfortunately I wasn't able to take pictures (and was sternly told as such by the guard when I tried, oops), but pictures and information can be found on the museum website here. It's totally unlike any museum gallery I've ever seen before, and I was totally overwhelmed!

Here are some of the highlights, but if at all possible you should take a day to visit the museum yourself and just wander round. 

Museums that incorporate architectural pieces into their layout are always a favourite. 

One of the medieval galleries, in a newer part of the museum. Note the beautiful stained glass on the left! 

We passed through this large hall early in our visit - they've actually taken a part of a church
 (from Italy?) and plonked it at the end of a huge hall. Pretty cool. 

This is what you see when you turn around from the previous photo. Ahh. 

Metalwork gallery. The V&A has a layout that sees rooms focus on particular artistic
techniques and materials, which is an interesting way of classifying some of their
 collections

I really liked this part of the museum - they've taken bits of medieval buildings that
survived in London until the 19th century, and have preserved them from getting
destroyed. They have an awesome 17th century, pre-Great Fire house front, which I
foolishly didn't get a photo of. It's also totally different to the rest of the museum, and
almost feels like you're in some London street a few hundred years ago at times!

This long gallery (the one with the aforementioned chapel at the end) sort of reminded
me of the long main hall at the Musee d'Orsay. It was also interesting to compare the
way that sculpture was displayed here with how they were done in Berlin at the Bode.
I thought the two museum had quite a few similarities (although my boyfriend
disagreed…), particularly in the rooms with giant triptychs and with architectural
features built into the museums. Although I haven't been to many museums with a lot
of galleries devoted to sculpture, so maybe that's just how it's done everywhere?
Who knows!

This is just here because I thought 'silver discovery area' was quite cute. Humour me. 

The next part of the post is devoted to one of THE coolest museum galleries/areas I have ever visited in my life (no over exaggeration). The museum's cast gallery has been taking casts of important pieces of sculpture since the 19th century, and is one of the world's foremost collections - they've got casts of some pieces that have since been damaged or decayed, so they're an important record of what monuments were like a couple of hundred years ago. But it's like a 'what's what of cool stonework across Europe', all in one place! It's so awesome, and is in such a lofty gallery, the scale is just phenomenal. I also got excited because alongside HUGE casts of Trajan's Column, metal casts of knights' tombs, and a large church door surround, there was a cast of an Anglo-Saxon stone cross from Hexham, Northumberland, my homeeee (sort of). It made me happy to think that something so close to home was worthy of being preserved alongside these amazing architectural and artistic masterpieces. I am easily pleased. 

In awe. 

The cast gallery is actually currently under some conservation and restoration work, so I am incredibly excited to come back and see it when it's all done and possibly even better!

Finally, about half way through our visit, we got a bit peckish and decided to go to the cafe. Little did we know how beautiful it would be! 

Just the combination of the tiles and the stained glass and the lighting together was so perfect! It definitely made up for the hideously overpriced drinks that we bought. 

Anyway, that's my round up of the V&A. Although I'm the first to admit I'm really not into art, the sculptural collections, the medieval galleries as well as the sheer amount and variety of STUFF in the museum made it definitely worth a visit, and that's without the added bonus of the amazingly impressive museum architecture itself! I'll definitely be coming back.

In other news, I took some photos on black and white film of the day that I will post when/if I get round to using the rest of the film up and then developing the roll. I'm also going to a talk this Saturday about Museum Architecture, which I am very excited about (especially because my boyfriend is willing to come with me. Have I mentioned he's wonderful?). I'm a bit worried that it'll just make me want to travel the world and see even more museums though, which my bank balance and time constraints probably will not agree with…but it should be good! 

This is also probably my last museum visit of 2013, so here's to 2014 and many more museum adventures!