The textile collections displays at the V&A....Hello all you museum goers...I've been thinking about Textiles lately (mainly because we worked up an application for an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award with Temple Newsam House on textile collections...more on that soon I hope)....and thought I'd go and check out the textile displays at the V&A in London - this was not my sole purpose of visit actually...I went to see the Strawberry Hill exhibition...which is interesting, but not as interesting as it should/could have been I think?....Anyway, I was not really surprised to see that the textile collection displays were rather dark (such material is quite obviously light sensitive), but was quite surprised to see how 'dated' they are. The comparison to the new displays, such as the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries........(shown here)....are too obvious to state - (and you'll notice that textiles are on display here too.....)
However, comparing them does direct attention to something that appears (to me anyway) to be interesting....i.e. the role/nature of the 'fragment'. The majority of the textile collections are quite literally 'fragments', (displayed in mahogany frames that you need to slide out to see, but this is by the bye)....and the things in the Medieval and Renaissance galleries are also 'fragments' - but there seems to be a kind of coherence in the new galleries that's absent in the old textile displays (maybe it's just to do with narrative....?)...Anyway, I only mention this because on my way between the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries and the Textiles Galleries I came across a display of fragments that seemed to offer a similar kind of fragmentary narrative as the textiles displays..........the Cast Court (and more especially, Trajan's Column). The Column, cut in two, displayed and displaced, just reminded me of the cut squares of textile fragments in the textile displays. You kind of understand what they are, but at the same time you don't....if you get my drift?Anyway...food for thought?....
Mark
Are you getting obsessed with form over function? As a lover of textiles I actually go looking for them in museums in order to study them as individual pieces, rather than to 'place them in the middle of a narrative'. The 'old textile displays' have served me well in the past. How would you see a change of display improving that experience for me? That's a serious question, btw, not a snipe.
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