Onsite Talk: Enriching the V&A

Enriching the V&A, the concluding volume in a trilogy on the museum’s 19th-century history, describes how the young museum’s rapid growth was soon driven more by collectors, agents and dealers, through loans, gifts and bequests, than by the combined expertise, acquisitions policies and buying power of its directors and curators. In this talk, V&A Keeper Emeritus Julius Bryant will discuss his new work, exploring the formative influence on the museum, and on pioneering fields of scholarship, of the V&A’s leading Victorian and Edwardian benefactors.