PROFILE
want to see The Best Of, but we’re also there for people who have a specifi c inter- est in a particular style or time or object.” Roth and the rest of the team will be lending their experience and support, both intellectually and with collections, to the V&A at Dundee project – a place for Scotland to celebrate its design heritage and promote its emerging creative talent. Currently in the planning and fund rais- ing phase, the museum has an estimated
opening date of 2015. While happy to help, Roth’s main focus is on the V&A itself, as this too needs a large injection of cash to fulfi l FuturePlan Phase 2. Exhibition Road alone will cost £41m (52.4, $64.3m), although pledges totalling £25m (32m, $39.2m) have helped enormously. The museum has also received a match-fund- ing pledge of £5m (6.4m, $7.8m) from Heritage Lottery Fund to support its ambi- tions to build a £100m (128m, $157m) endowment over the next 15 to 20 years.
VIRTUAL REALITY As if this isn’t enough to be juggling, Roth’s also keen to add a department of project design. “London is a city of architecture with so many well-known architects, but there isn’t a museum dedicated to it. The Royal Institute of British Architects is more of an archive,” he says. “The V&A already has quite a remarkable collection, but we’ll collect more and work with architects.” This in itself creates challenges for the
Shell Chair created by Brian Long
FUTUREPLAN PHASE 2 Design highlights include a Torsion Box
FuturePlan Phase 2 is the V&A’s second 10-year period of restoration and rede- sign, which aims to reinforce its position as the world’s greatest museum of art and design. The crucial project in achiev- ing the long-term aims of Phase 2 is the Exhibition Road Building Project. This will provide a large, underground
exhibition gallery for its world-class exhi- bitions with an open public courtyard and café and an improved entrance into the museum at street level.
24
future, as much of the work that architects do is now created digitally. “What will a museum’s archive be in 10-years’ time?”
British Design 1948 – 2012 shows the best of British post-war art and design from the 1948 ‘austerity’ games to the summer of 2012
asks Roth. “We’re working on a concept to solve this problem now. We also need to think about our own digital programme,” he continues. “We already have a digital V&A to some extent with the website and V&A Channel, but it’ll be even more impor- tant in the future.” Roth isn’t worried that the invention of virtual museums will have a negative impact on the industry. “The fi rst 360-degree cinema in Paris was shown in the 1900s and the newspaper headlines were ‘This is the end of the museum’,” he smiles. “When we introduced media in the
1980s, people said it was the death knoll for museums. Then computers were intro- duced and they again said it signalled the end. But museums are booming. Instead of being dead, they’re more alive than ever.” Roth loves the fact the V&A is very much
Other highlights of Phase 2 include:
the creation of a furniture gallery, pro- viding a permanent home for the V&A’s extensive furniture collection for the fi rst time; the restoration of the Cast Courts; and the complete redisplay and reinter- pretation of seven galleries that tell the story of European art and design from
1600 to 1800. Offsite projects being developed include the Clothworkers’ Centre for Textile and Fashion Study and Conservation at Blythe House.
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital
alive both around the globe and to the peo- ple who live in South Kensington and see it as their local museum. “A woman intro- duced herself to me when I fi rst started and said, ‘I’m 83. I wanted to say hello to my new neighbour’,” Roth recounts. “She’s been coming to the V&A every Sunday since her parents fi rst brought her when she was three-years-old. Our audience is both that woman and the tourists who plan their trip around a visit here.” Roth loves his own visits as much as the
visitors. “I’ve got more out of the last 10 months than some people get in a position they’ve held for 20 years,” he says. With an outlook like this, the V&A appears to be in safe hands for all its tomorrows. ●
AM 3 2012 ©cybertrek 2012
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