Tag Archives: victoria and albert museum

A museum that once existed in London, but is no more

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DURING A VISIT to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s recently opened Store at London’s Olympic Park, I spotted an interesting vitrine containing artefacts from India. The small collection was accompanied by an informative label, which tells the viewer that these objects were once housed in a museum that no longer exists – London’s India Museum. This establishment existed from 1801 until 1879.

The India Museum was founded by the British East India Company (‘EIC’). Designed to acquaint visitors with India’s resources and industries, it was housed in the company’s headquarters in Leadenhall Street. After the so-called Indian Mutiny (1857-1858: First War of Independence), the EIC lost its role as the British administrator of India. It was replaced by the government-controlled India Office.  

In 1851, the India Museum was a major contributor to the Indian section of Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Later, the museum continued to participate in international exhibitions that followed. In 1861, the museum moved to Fife House in Whitehall, then to the attics of the newly built India Office in 1869, and from 1875 then to the ‘Eastern Galleries’ on the exhibition site to the west of the present Exhibition Road in South Kensington.

The India Museum was closed in 1879. Then as related in the Victoria and Albert’s website:

“… the collections were dispersed. In broad terms, the natural history specimens were divided between the Royal Botanic Gardens and the nascent British Museum (Natural History) – today the Natural History Museum – according to their nature. Antiquities and some parts of the ethnographic collections went to the British Museum. The bulk of the manufactured objects, however, were transferred to the South Kensington Museum, forerunner of today’s V&A.”

It is a few of those 19,000 objects transferred to the Victoria and Albert Museum that we saw in the vitrine at the V&A’s amazing open access warehouse at the V&A Store at Olympic Park. While we were at the Store, we saw many other objects that must have been brought from India. No doubt, some of those had once been on display in the museum that exists no more.

A warehouse filled with wonderful artefacts in east London

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MANY MUSEUMS INCLUDING London’s Victoria and Albert (‘V&A’) own far more items than they have room to display them. The objects for which there is no gallery space to display them usually lie hidden away in museums’ storerooms. Following the example of a museum in Rotterdam, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the V&A has created an open access storeroom, where members of the public can see many of the objects that were formerly hidden away from view in the museum’s old warehouses.

V&A East Storehouse, which was designed by the American studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, opened its doors to public visitors on 31 May 2025. It is in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park near East London’s Stratford Station and West Ham’s football stadium.   We had to queue for about 20 minutes before gaining admittance on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It was well worth waiting to see this incredible creation.

The parts of the Storehouse which are open to the public are arranged on three floors. The upper two are on galleries that overlook the lowest floor. Stepping into this edifice is rather like entering a huge B&Q or Ikea warehouse filled with shelving. However, there the similarity ends. The shelves are covered with an amazing variety of artefacts, ranging from ancient to modern times, and sourced from all over the world. There is also a viewing platform that allows visitors to watch the museum’s conservators working. Another room houses only one exhibit: an enormous backdrop that Picasso painted for the 1924 performance of the ballet, “Le Train Bleu”. It measures 10.4 by 11 metres, and is the artist’s largest known painting.

Without going into much detail, it seems that whoever arranged the artefacts in the Storehouse had a great sense of humour. For example, a twentieth century chair is placed right next to a rococo chest of drawers, and a fragment from a mediaeval church is placed immediately above an early example of a television. Few of the artefacts are labelled apart from bearing their museum inventory numbers. Dotted around this contemporary Aladdin’s Cave of cultural treasures, there are several exhibits with labels that explain various aspects of running the V&A and its curatorial philosophy.

With good transport connections to central London, there is no excuse not to visit the city’s latest fascinating cultural experience: the V&A Storehouse.

Transported from Florence (Italy) to South Kensington (London, UK)

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WHILE WAITING FOR an item to be delivered to me at the National Art Library, which is housed within the Victoria and Albert Museum (‘V&A’) in South Kensington, I had time to look around the museum. The V&A is a treasure house filled with fascinating exhibits from all around the world. Today, I noticed something that had not caught my eye before. It is an entire Italian Renaissance chapel, which was transported from Florence to its present location in the V&A.

This chancel chapel used to be part of the Santa Chiara convent in Florence. The convent belonged to the Poor Clares, who were female branch of the Franciscan order. Mass used to be held in this small chapel, which was constructed in the first half of the 15th century. Following the 1808 Napoleonic suppressions (of Italian religious orders), the chapel became used as a sculptor’s studio in the 1840s and 1850s. The V&A’s website (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17758/chancel-chapel-from-church-of-chapel/#object-details) revealed:

“In 1860, J. C. Robinson bought the chapel on behalf of the V&A, and it was dismantled and shipped to London, whereupon it was reassembled in the North Court of the Museum … In 1908 the chapel was moved from the North Court to the eastern apsidal end of the Aston Webb wing of the museum, parallel to Cromwell Road, where it remains today.”

Because of its relocation to London, the chapel is the only example of an Italian Renaissance chapel to be seen outside Italy. Moving this chapel was a less ambitious achievement that what can be seen at the Met Cloisters in Manhattan. At this museum, several entire cloisters, which had been removed from France, have been reassembled for visitors to see. Heaven forbid that the Italians will begin demanding to return the chapel, and that the French will seek repossession of their cloisters. I feel that these repatriations are even less likely than the Elgin Marbles being sent back to Greece.