Laura Elliott

Research project: Modernising the Victoria and Albert Museum: Transatlantic Exchanges in Museum Development from 1900 to 1955

Abstract

The influence of the V&A's paradigmatic antecedent, the South Kensington Museum (1857-1899), on North America's burgeoning museum culture in the late 19th century, has been celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. However, little is known about how this relationship developed after it was renamed the "Victoria and Albert" (V&A) in 1899. Yet, in the first half of the 20th century the V&A radically diverged from its 19th century modernity and mission to improve the artistic products of modern industry through broad public education. The movement instead passed to America where the idea of the modern museum continued to evolve. My thesis aims to address this deficit in knowledge by building on insights from current literature in museum and art and design history, and on largely unpublished archival evidence of exchanges: staff visits, collections loans and correspondences relating to museum development. Analysis yields significant new knowledge and interpretation of how the V&A's relationship with America's museums evolved; although continuing to serve as an important model to the latter, the V&A also increasingly looked to America's museums for new ideas on arrangement, display and public education. 

Museum modernization is a key concept in describing the ideas and intentions behind the physical alterations the V&A underwent and changes to the arrangement of its collections and display. Analysis of exchanges between the V&A and America's leading museums, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Fogg in Harvard, the Met and MoMA in New York, yields their own terms and brands of art evident in display aesthetics. Such shifting definitions are diachronically explored against changing power relations between Britain and America which were often tense, where competing ideas of the historic and modern are seen to have led to a co-opting and/or appropriation of national models (Serge Guilbaut 1985). This study, therefore, aims to contribute to the growing body of research on transnational perspectives of museums of modern and contemporary art (Andrew McClellan: 2008; J. Pedro Lorente: 2011).