Selling Dreams, curated by V&A Curator Susanna Brown, has completed its international tour closing at Auckland Museum, New Zealand. The exhibition is now on its way to the V&A where it will be on display from 28 March to 4 May 2014.
What is Selling Dreams?
The V&A is home to the UK’s National Collection of the Art of Photography. The Collection comprises over half a million works including many hundreds of fashion photographs by international names such as Edward Steichen (1879-1973), Irving Penn (1917-2009), Richard Avedon (1923-2004), Helmut Newton (1920-2004), David Bailey (b.1938) and Tim Walker (b.1970).
Through displaying the greatest highlights from the Collection and many rarely exhibited works, this display explores the range of approaches to fashion image-making, from the earliest years of the twentieth century to today.
The exhibition charts how the medium flourished with the rise of illustrated magazines and how influential editors and art directors such as Alexey Brodovitch, Alexander Liberman and Diana Vreeland collaborated with photographers to shape generations of style throughout the past century. Exposing the medium’s evolution and the fascinating dialogue between fashion photography and fine art photography, this exhibition is beautiful and scholarly, glamorous and insightful.
The Tour
Selling Dreams has been seen by almost 200,000 visitors on its UK and international tour to seven venues. In order to prepare the exhibition for its journey to London, V&A Exhibition Coordinator Charlotte Hale travelled to New Zealand. Acting as a courier she worked with the team at Auckland Museum, including Production Manager Grant Rewi, Conservator Ian Langston, and Workshop Technician Heath King, to ensure that Selling Dreams was packed up safely for its journey back to the V&A.
See Selling Dreams on display at the V&A between 28 March and 4 May 2014.