The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in the United Kingdom is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. The Victoria and Albert Museum collection is housed across six sites in the United Kingdom. This "family of museums" comprises;-
V&A South Kensington, the museum's original London site which covers 12.5 acres (5.1 ha) in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London and has over 145 galleries. Young V&A, opened as the V&A Bethnal Green Museum in 1872, became the Museum of Childhood in 1974 and then the Young V&A in 2023. V&A Dundee, opened in September 2018 V&A Wedgwood Collection, the former Wedgwood Museum in Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent acquired in 2014 V&A East Storehouse, opened in June 2025 V&A East Museum, opened in April 2026. The sites share a common website which also hosts the "Order an Object" service allowing members of the public to view individual objects at V&A East Storehouse or at South Kensington. The museum collection spans 5,000 years, from ancient history to the present day, and includes works from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia plus art from South Asia, China, Japan, Korea and the Islamic world. The East Asian collections are particularly strong in ceramics and metalwork, while the Islamic collection is amongst the largest in the Western world. The museum also holds one of the largest collections of post-classical sculpture in the world. Its collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture being the largest outside Italy, however, the art of antiquity in most areas is not the V&A's focus. The holdings of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, jewellery, silver, metalwork, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints, drawings and photographs are also among the largest and most comprehensive in the world. The museum can trace its origins to the Government School of Design, established in 1832, and until 1983, the museum remained directly controlled by a government department, initially the Board of Education and eventually the Department of Education and Science. It is now a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. As with other national British museums, entrance is free. Overall, the V&A is one of the world's largest museums.
History
Origins
The Victoria and Albert Museum has its origins in the Government School of Design, established by the British Government in 1832 at Somerset House in London for "the direct application of the Arts to Manufactures". The School of Design was created because the government feared that the poor quality of art education in Britain was restricting the growth and export potential of British industry. The school included a museum which, alongside contemporary artworks, held plaster casts of ancient sculptures and of features from classical buildings to use as teaching aides. At the French Industrial Exposition of 1844 in Paris, £1400 was spent on items for the museum. In January 1852, Henry Cole was appointed head of the Government School of Design and announced his intention to transform it into an institution that would "elevate the Art Education of the whole people, and not merely ... teach the artisans, who are servants of the manufacturers." Prince Albert, who had worked with Cole on the Great Exhibition, supported this approach and offered the use of a royal mansion, Marlborough House on The Mall, for this new Museum of Manufactures, which would include the Design School. With a parliamentary grant of £5000, Cole purchased several exhibits from the Great Exhibition of 1851 for the museum's collection. These included a large number of textiles from India and several works by Augustus Pugin. In 1853 the museum attracted 125,000 visitors and was re-named the Museum of Ornamental Art.
Move to South Kensington
By February 1854, discussions were underway to transfer the museum to Brompton on the edge of central London. There, as a legacy of the Great Exhibition, Prince Albert was planning a group of institutions for the improvement of industry by the study and application of the arts and sciences. Dubbed "Albertopolis" by the British press, the project included what eventually became the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and Imperial College London. Given the run-down nature of Brompton, Cole persuaded the authorities to rename the area South Kensington to make it more attractive to potential visitors. In 1855, the German architect Gottfried Semper produced a design for the South Kensington site, but it was rejected as too expensive. In 1857 the museum, which included scientific displays, did move to South Kensington where, at the suggestion of Prince Albert, it was re-named the South Kensington Museum.
The South Kensington site was then occupied by a large, dilapidated property, Brompton Park House. In 1856, that building was extended by the "Brompton Boilers". These starkly utilitarian iron galleries were described as "hideously ugly" by The Builder magazine but did include a refreshment room, making the museum the first in the world to provide a catering service for visitors. The "Brompton Boilers" were dismantled in 1867 and their structural iron-work reassembled in East London to build the museum's Bethnal Green branch. The Bethnal Green branch, which is now the Young V&A, then housed the museum's collection of shoes, boots, animal products, butterflies and moths. The first building to be erected that still forms part of the South Kensington site was the gallery built to house the art collection donated by John Sheepshanks. Built in 1857 on the eastern side of the central garden of Brompton Park House, its architect was the civil engineer Captain Francis Fowke. John Charles Robinson became curator of the museum in 1853 and in his ten years in the role made annual trips to France, Italy and Spain. He purchased treasures that had become available on the art market due to social upheaval, revolutions or the disestablishment of religious institutions. In this way the museum virtually cornered the European market in medieval sculpture and assembled the greatest collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture anywhere outside of Italy plus significant collections of ivory and ceramics.
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