News from the Learning Department

Twenty Objects for Twenty Years: Alabaster Pietà, Southern Netherlands

  By Paula Nuttall, Director of Late Medieval to Early Renaissance Year Course.   This statuette of the Virgin Mary with the dead Christ on her knee is a small masterpiece of alabaster carving.  Just under 40 cm in height, it was made in the Southern Netherlands by a sculptor known, slightly confusingly, as the Master of Rimini (after an alabaster Crucifixion scene now in a museum...
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Pieta

An Introduction to Costume Design for Ex - Prisoners

By Marisa Smith, Programme Manager, Workshops and Events.   To complement the major exhibition Hollywood Costumes, the V&A worked with Synergy Theatre Project to deliver on-site costume design classes for ex prisoners.  These 4 sessions were designed to give an insight into the role of the costume designer, with particular focus upon the collaborative nature of this profession....
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Pop Up Stories

  By Rebecca English, Assistant Programme Manager   This year we introduced new Art & Design workshops for Primary Schools. One of those sessions, Pop Up Stories, is led by Sarah Bridgland , a graphic artist and former student from the Royal College of Art, who works in 3D collage. We worked with Sarah to develop a session which would allow pupils to explore stories hidden in the V...
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Pop up Stories

Graphic Gathering

  By Rebecca English, Assistant Programme Manager   Last October, I posted about Graphic Gathering, a new project for schools. The project aimed to give secondary students an insight into design at Higher Education and industry level by answering a real-life brief delivered by V&A and D&AD.  On the 5th of February we welcomed back participating schools from across the UK to...
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Graphic Gathering Poster

Twenty Objects for Twenty Years: Illuminated Book, Italy, c.1465

By Paula Nuttall, Director of Late Medieval to Early Renaissance Year Course.   This week’s object is a book, a deluxe manuscript copy of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, written and illuminated in the 1460s, probably in Rome, for the Sienese scholar and lawyer Gregorio Lolli Piccolomini, a cousin of Pope Pius II, who became papal secretary in 1459 – one of several family...
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Illuminated Book, Italy, c.1465

Twenty Objects for Twenty Years: Chasuble, Italy and England, c.1400-1430

  By Paula Nuttall, Director of Late Medieval to Early Renaissance Year Course.   I tend to find that textiles, especially liturgical vestments like this chasuble, don’t initially spark an excited response from viewers – which is a pity, as they’re well worth taking the time to look at.  Perhaps one reason textiles don’t get a good press is that relatively...
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Chasuble, Italy and England, c.1400-1430

DesignLab: Ceramics with Keith Harrison

  By Rebecca English, Assistant Programme Manager   In December the schools team worked with current artist in residence Keith Harrison  on a DesignLab project with students from Langley Academy. DesignLab is a programme of projects that explore new ways of engaging students with art & design. It brings schools together with museum educators & curators, practising artists...
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Ceramics Studio

Twenty Objects for Twenty Years: Reliquary Diptych, 1300 - 1350

By Paula Nuttall, Director of  the Late Medieval to Early Renaissance Year Course.   To celebrate our past twenty years, between now and the end of the academic year in July I’ll be posting a weekly blog featuring twenty Medieval and Renaissance objects from the period 1250-1500 in the V&A.  They won’t always be the most famous ones – in fact this will be an...
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Reliquary Diptych, Italy

Make - It: Costume Design

By Rosemary Cronin, Learning Facilitator.   The February half term holidays are fast approaching and once again we will have a great calendar of events taking place throughout the Museum for families to take part in. To give you a taste of the kind of events of taking place, as part of the October Half-term activities  for families celebrating Hollywood Costume, the Museum ran a number...
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Hayley Nebauer Teaching
Digital design workshop
The Learning Department programmes events, activities, courses and projects to inspire creativity in all of our audiences. We also manage gallery interpretation, residency programmes and evaluation.