Eulogy for the exquisite corpse
VISUAL ART
DUNCAN MACMILLAN
SURREAL THINGS: SURREALISM AND DESIGN ****
V&A, LONDON
JAMES "ATHENIAN" STUART, 1713-1788: THE REDISCOVERY OF ANTIQUITY *****
V&A, LONDON
UNTIL a few years ago, the V&A seemed like Gloria Swanson in Sunset
Boulevard, a faded star, once great, now bypassed by the modern world.
Admission charges had halved attendance figures. The collections seemed
too vast and too diverse ever to find a clear purpose; the building too
huge and decrepit to function properly.
Since Mark Jones took over, however, leaving the Royal Museums of
Scotland to do so, the V&A has reclaimed its place among the world's
greatest. In dry language, it is a museum of the decorative and applied
arts; but what it has become so clearly, through an ongoing policy of
new displays, restored galleries that recover the building's original
architecture and benchmark exhibitions, is a museum of lifestyle. It is
far more than that, of course, but essentially its collections reveal
the beauty we invest in the things that we make for our daily lives, and
across all major cultures, too. The V&A was multicultural long before
multiculturalism was invented.
But the V&A has not betrayed its origins to achieve success, nor have
its policies been shaped by the need to court political approval. On the
contrary, it has actually recovered its original purpose and it has done
so by exploring the ways its historical collections bear on the present,
and by successfully sharing this not just with specialists but with us
all. It has reclaimed its place in contemporary culture without
condescension, too. Quite simply, it has made itself topical.
Exhibitions have been the main tool, but each of the series of major
exhibitions that continues currently with Surreal Things: Surrealism and
Design has been built around a core of objects that the museum owns and,
so, links back to the interpretation of the collections.
cont'd....
http://living.scotsman.com/visual.cfm?id=528432007