The Curators’ Lives archive is a collection of oral history interviews with V&A museum professionals from the past (and present). This archive is a door into various museum collections and departments and it allows us to see how the various departments of the V&A have changed, evolved, and merged over the years. In some cases, it also highlights how departments have ceased to exist, such as the Circulation department.
Circulation was a department unlike any other as they were not limited to the collecting of one particular aspect of art and design, like textiles or ceramics. The purpose of Circulation was the creation of travelling, or so-called circulating, exhibitions to be sent to art colleges, museums and institutions across the UK, and even on occasion travelling internationally. The Curators’ Lives archive, while not an archive specifically of Circulation staff, offers great insight into the running of this department, how objects would be packaged and transported, as well as the vast array of exhibitions that they created.
Barbara Morris, a Senior Research Assistant of Circulation, discusses many of the departments’ successful exhibitions such as the Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts exhibition (1952). In her interview, she describes it as a landmark exhibition of both the Circulation department and the V&A as a whole. You can hear her discuss the idea around the exhibition here:
Another big exhibition was on Italian Renaissance Maiolica (1969), which aimed, as described in a press release, to “bring to life before our eyes the splendour and beauty of the golden age in European craftmanship.” Betty Elzea, another Research Assistant from the Circulation department, gave a vast array of materials relating to this exhibition, including object photographs, press materials, display sketches, exhibition catalogues and poster, packing lists, object display labels, and the list goes on.
Betty Elzea also kept a lot of correspondence relating to the Arts of Ancient Rome exhibition, also organised by Circulation. This includes object photographs, label descriptions, a poster of the exhibition, and sketches of the exhibition display boards.
As well as showcasing British and Italian design, the Circulation department took inspiration from current trends in design. In the 1950s and 60s, there was a rising interest in Nordic styles in the decorative arts and other household objects like furniture, which led to Circulation designing the exhibition Finlandia: Modern Finnish Design (1961-2). This exhibition had a range of materials and objects ranging from glasses and vases, to lighting fixtures and ornaments like bird and duck sculptures.
The staff of Circulation who were interviewed as part of the Curator’s Lives oral histories project discuss many more exhibitions that the department created and shipped across the UK and even globally in some cases. What is more the interviews offer insight into the closure of Circulation, the impact it had of staff, what departments staff then joined consequently, and even how many of Circulation’s own collection of objects were acquired by the other curatorial departments, like Ceramics, Textiles, and Prints and Drawings. If you walk around the museum today and happen to read an object label that says “CIRC”, you will known that that object was once part of the V&A’s travelling exhibitions department.
You can read and hear about this department in more detail in the many interviews that make up the Curators’ Lives archive. It truly is a treasure trove of information, personal stories and insight behind the scenes of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Here’s one final snippet from Betty Elzea’s interviews where she describes getting in touch with other departments for exhibitions and also on learning more about certain areas by browsing the National Art Library’s collection.
