Victoria and Albert Museum - Collections

Collections

The Victoria & Albert Museum is split into four Collections departments, Asia; Furniture, Textiles and Fashion; Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics & Glass and Word & Image. The museum curators care for the objects in the collection and provide access to objects that are not currently on display to the public and scholars.

The collection departments are further divided into sixteen display areas, whose combined collection numbers over 6.5 million objects, not all items are displayed or stored at the V&A. There is a repository at Blythe House, West Kensington, as well as annex institutions managed by the V&A, also the Museum lends exhibits to other institutions. The following lists each of the collections on display and the number of objects within the collection.

  • Architecture (annex of the RIBA)
  • Asia
  • British Galleries (cross department display)
  • Ceramics
  • Childhood (annex of the V&A)
  • Contemporary (cross department function)
  • Fashion & Jewellery
  • Furniture
  • Glass
  • Metalwork
  • Paintings & Drawings
  • Photography
  • Prints & Books
  • Sculpture
  • Textiles
  • Theatre (includes V&A Theatre Collections Reading Room, an annex of the former Theatre Museum)
  • 2,050,000
  • 160,000
  • ...
  • 74,000
  • 20,000
  • ...
  • 28,000
  • 14,000
  • 6,000
  • 31,000
  • 202,500
  • 500,000
  • 1,500,000
  • 17,500
  • 38,000
  • 1,905,000





The museum has 145 galleries, but given the vast extent of the collections only a small percentage is ever on display. Many acquisitions have been made possible only with the assistance of the National Art Collections Fund.

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Famous quotes containing the word collections:

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