{"id":3039,"date":"2010-09-06T18:47:08","date_gmt":"2010-09-06T22:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2010-09-06T18:47:32","modified_gmt":"2010-09-06T22:47:32","slug":"victoria-and-albert-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/victoria-and-albert-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria and Albert Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

When going to the Victoria and Albert Museum the first rule is: do not get a map.\u00a0 It is completely useless.\u00a0 It will only make you more confused (if that is at all possible).\u00a0 The Victoria and Albert is like no other museum I’ve ever been to.\u00a0 Instead of the sparse but well cataloged rooms of the British Museum or the abstract instillation art of the Tate Modern, there is just “stuff.”\u00a0 It feels as if one has stumbled into a very eccentric, very wealthy old man’s closet.\u00a0 There is a vague sense of organization, but the curator has not stuck to a strict order.\u00a0 Instead one is assaulted with a variety of priceless artifacts.\u00a0 To top the disorganization of the rooms is the disorganization of the building itself.\u00a0 The rooms flow into one another like a maze.\u00a0 From the moment I walked in I should have known that it was going to be a completely new experience — immediately outside of the tube station there was an exhibit filled with treasures that would have been centerpiece at many smaller museums.\u00a0 I then continued into the fashion exhibit which was filled with a barrage priceless vintage clothing from across the world.\u00a0 From there we went through the sculpture hall to the one piece that I felt summed up the museum as a whole:\u00a0 a book tower.\u00a0 It was a multi-storied wooden structure just filled with a random assortment of books — everything from romance novels to Chaucer to Russian literature.\u00a0 This disorganization and jumble of priceless and random books should have been an indicator that my day was about to get a lot more impressive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> (courtesy of http:\/\/www.vam.ac.uk\/things-to-do\/blogs\/11-architects-build-small-spaces)<\/p>\n

The madness of the Victoria and Albert reached its pinnacle in the Medieval and Renaissance section where upon a cursory browsing I stumbled upon a little journal tucked away behind a wall.\u00a0 This journal was not accompanied with any great display or paired with a painting or some other artifact — it stood on its own.\u00a0 This unassuming little book turned out to be a Da Vinci journal.\u00a0 If it had not been for the presence of a gold plaque indicating that it was something special I would not have even read the explanation.\u00a0 However, it was a room full or gold plaques and priceless artifacts and it was a completely fluke that I stopped and looked.\u00a0 From this point on, I just gave up.\u00a0 I was too incredulous to take the Victoria and Albert seriously.\u00a0 In a world where small local museums are starving for artifacts the Victoria and Albert have so many that they just cannot display them to their full potential.\u00a0 I personally wish that the Victoria and Albert would loan out items to eliminate the clutter and share their wealth.\u00a0 This would make the museum less overwhelming and it would allow more people to view more fascinating treasures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When going to the Victoria and Albert Museum the first rule is: do not get a map.\u00a0 It is completely useless.\u00a0 It will only make you more confused (if that is at all possible).\u00a0 The Victoria and Albert is like no other museum I’ve ever been to.\u00a0 Instead of the sparse but well cataloged rooms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":446,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6678,77,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-amy","category-museums","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}