London: Sep 3: V&A Museum Part 2

On Thursday, September 3, 2009, I re-visited the V&A Museum in a failed attempt to finish seeing it (first visit).

I took another batch of pictures this trip.

I realized while walking through the museum this time that silver is another emphasis of the museum. It didn't occur to me before because I was thinking about types of art, not the material with which it was made.

This day, I browsed sculptures, cabinets (I liked the 17th century European ones), jewelry boxes (these were intricately carved and richly detailed), gold table pieces (precisely crafted), religious ornaments (plates, lamps, crosses, etc.), and paintings (nothing remarkable), most from the early days of the museum (the 19th century). I also visited the densely-packed exhibit of jewelry, showing century by century and country by country how jewelry has evolved over the last two thousand years. (Yes, the exhibit is as extensive as I make it sound.) Finally, the last exhibit I visited before I ran out of time was the exhibit on theater. It includes not only costumes and advertising posters but also interesting items one wouldn't expect: old account ledgers and cue books.

The museum's age and historical significance shows. For instance, the museum has a small photography exhibit displaying, among other things, photographs shown in the museum in 1858 as part of the world's first museum-held photograph exhibit. I'm also amused that the museum is so old that the mid-19th-century frescoes it had installed are now appropriate to display as historic work.