Those of you who have passed by the Museum in recent days may have noticed that it is no longer being touted by Messrs Elmgreen and Dragset as a ‘New Residential Development’.
Back in October, those artists took advantage of the hoardings covering up building works and used them to display this provocative sign as part of their installation piece ‘Tomorrow’. As a result of their design, the humble hoardings received a lot of attention and a wide range of responses from visitors and passers-by.
The temporary wooden hoardings are in place to provide a practical and visual screen around the major construction work currently taking place in what will be our new Europe 1600-1800 galleries. I like to think of it as a ‘visual valance’ – protecting the Museum’s modesty as messy work takes place – floors are dug up, new doorways are made in walls etc. …
‘Tomorrow’ came to an end last month (an unusual, yet accurate, statement to make!), which meant that the hoardings were ready for a ‘make-over’. Fittingly, they are now proudly promoting the re-development of the Europe galleries, with eye-catching glimpses of some of the objects that will be displayed in them.
The new graphics by Why Not Associates provide visual snippets of an assortment of objects from the Museum’s collections, with a wide variety of: sizes, shapes, materials, colours, origins and purposes.
See if you can spot any of the following:
- Bernini’s sculpture of Neptune
- Spanish steel gauntlets with gold and silver decoration
- Figue of Harlequin by the Meissen porcelain factory
- The earliest fan in the V&A’s collection
- Mother-of-pearl ewer from Gujarat (India)
- Square piano made in Madrid
- Ming dynasty porcelain ewer with German mounts
- And finally, a digitated lemon (!)
We’re very pleased with the new hoarding design and hope that it tempts passers-by to come and explore the galleries when they open in December.