|
Fine Arts Museums Embarks on Formal Accord with the Victoria and Albert Museum
7/5/2006 San Francisco, 5 July 2006—John E. Buchanan Jr., Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Mark Jones, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, have reached an accord for direct collaboration between the two museums for the next five years, beginning in 2006. Guided by a desire to enhance international cultural and professional cooperation and strengthen ties between the British and American people, together they plan to bring excellent shows to their respective audiences. The formal partnership is the result of a strengthening relationship between the two institutions that grew from a series of shared major international exhibitions. These presentations include A Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum, on view at the Legion of Honor in 1999; Art Deco 1910–1939, on view in 2004, also at the Legion; and International Arts and Crafts: William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright (18 March–18 June 2006).
During the four-month run of the exhibition International Arts and Crafts: William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright, half a million people visited the de Young. Designed by Pritzker Prize winning architects Herzog & de Meuron and located in Golden Gate Park, the new de Young has been visited by over one million visitors since its reopening in the autumn of 2005.
Created in the spirit of mutually beneficial cooperation, and based not on a financial agreement but on shared interests, this relationship will allow the two institutions to work together on ambitious projects that would not otherwise be possible. The vision for this formal partnership is multi-faceted and includes intellectual collaboration in such areas as exhibitions, publications, conservation, and education programs, with the potential for temporary exchange of staff to carry out such activities. In addition to an intellectual exchange, an important component of this joint venture will be various collection sharing initiatives, designed to make significant artworks available to the respective audiences in the UK and the United States. “The relationship,” states Mark Jones, “will help raise the profile of each museum in the other’s geographic region and create a new model for future intellectual and object exchange.” Similarly John E. Buchanan Jr. notes, “We are very pleased to embark on this relationship with the V&A, as it will contribute to our mutual goal to make both our museums’ collections accessible to broader audiences, and more interestingly, the temporary exchange of objects for exhibition will also create the context for contact and the exchange of knowledge between our curators, conservators, and educators.”
Preferential Status Regarding Exhibition Sharing
Under this partnership, the two institutions have formally agreed to extend to each other preferential status regarding the exchange of exhibitions. Among the special temporary exhibitions that are being developed by the Fine Arts Museums and are due to travel to the V&A in 2010 or 2011 is Victorian Avant-Garde: Whistler, Godwin, and the Aesthetic Movement, which will premier in San Francisco in 2008. Special temporary exhibitions already developed by the V&A, London, that will travel to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as part of this agreement include the upcoming Vivienne Westwood at the de Young Museum (10 February 2007–6 May 2007).
Collection Sharing
The V&A and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have also agreed to work together to identify objects to be made available for short-term or long-term loan from their respective holdings. Through this model of collection sharing, specialized exhibitions could be developed to feature such selections as paintings, ceramics, photography, textiles, costumes, fans, ethnographic material, and tapestries. Resulting from such activities as renovations and reinstallations, the V&A will work with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco to make available a sequence of small but highly select exhibitions drawn from collections not on view. The first of such projects will potentially include Medieval and Renaissance Treasures (late 2007–2008), an exhibition of masterpieces drawn from the V&A’s medieval and renaissance collections that are currently in storage while the galleries are being renovated. An important part of the accord states that the Fine Arts Museums will help underwrite conservation costs necessitated by these collection sharing projects.
Collaborative Programs and Resource Sharing
In addition to preferential status in regards to exhibition and collection sharing, both museums believe that it would be beneficial to develop joint educational programs exploring art historical, technical, and/or ethical issues that affect the international museum community today. Given the diverse and frequently overlapping nature of their collections, such programs would provide opportunities for different segments of both museums’ staffs to collaborate and share ideas and resources.
About the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The de Young museum and its sister museum, the Legion of Honor, together comprise the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the largest public arts institution in the city and one of the largest art museums in the United States.
The Legion of Honor is located in San Francisco's Lincoln Park (34th Avenue and Clement Street). Its collections span 4000 years and include major holdings in Rodin sculpture; paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, de la Tour, Vigée Le Brun, Cézanne, Monet, and Picasso, among other Dutch, Italian, German, English, and French masters; a fifteenth-century Spanish ceiling; European decorative arts; tapestries; and over 70,000 prints and drawings.
Founded in 1895 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the de Young museum has been an integral part of the cultural fabric of the city and a cherished destination for millions of residents and visitors to the region for over one hundred years. In October 2005, the de Young reopened in a state-of-the-art new building and attracted more than 50,000 visitors during its opening weekend. Designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects in San Francisco, the new de Young provides San Francisco with a landmark art museum to showcase the museum’s significant collections of American art from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, art from Central and South America, and from the Pacific and Africa, as well as an important and diverse collection of textiles.
About the V&A, London
The Victoria and Albert Museum, known as the V&A, is the world’s greatest museum of art and design, with collections unrivalled in their scope and diversity.
The V&A was established following the enormous success of the Great Exhibition in 1852 to make works of art available to all and to inspire British designers and manufacturers. The V&A gained its current name in 1899 when Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone of a new wing and renamed the Museum in memory of her husband, Prince Albert.
Today the V&A’s collections of amazing artifacts from many of the world's richest cultures continue to intrigue, inspire and inform. The Museum’s collections span over two thousand years of human creativity, in virtually every medium and from many parts of the world and include paintings, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, furniture, fashion, photography, glass, jewellery, metalwork and textiles. The collections are drawn from across Europe and include world-class holdings from India, China and Japan.
The V&A is currently undergoing a dramatic programme of renewal and restoration. The renovation of the galleries began in 2001 with the reopening of The British Galleries 1500–1900. Other recently reopened galleries include the paintings gallery which features works by celebrated artists such as Constable, Turner, Degas and Botticelli; the new Hintze sculpture galleries which displays masterpieces by Bernini, Canova and Rodin; and the silver galleries that house the national collection of silver from spectacular medieval reliquaries to austere contemporary chalices. Future openings include the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art from the Middle East, due to open 20 July 2006. It will house over four hundred treasures from the Middle East, including the famous Ardabil carpet, the oldest dated and one of the largest carpets in the world. In 2009 the V&A will open its new suite of galleries dedicated to its outstanding collection of Medieval and Renaissance objects.
The V&A is open daily 10:00 a.m.–5:45 p.m. and until 10:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and the last Friday of every month. Admission to the V&A is free. Some special temporary exhibitions and events incur a fee.
|
