The new webpage, entitled 'How have objects come to be in the V&A?', points out that for some objects, their journeys have involved known histories of violence, coercion or injustice, while for others there remains uncertainty over exactly how they came to be here.
Art UK has taken it as its mission to digitally unite one million artworks from 3,500 institutions. This free-to-all portal connects everyone with the UK's public art collections.
The nineteenth-century Italian aristocrat Virginia Oldoini, Countess de Castiglione, has been cast in many lights: narcissist, courtesan, spy, exhibitionist. In the photo studio of Mayer & Pierson, she played all these parts and one more-the role of self-portraitist. For decades, Oldoini helped conceptualize and starred in more than four hundred portraits so experimental and expressive that they have drawn comparisons to works by Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman.
Lorena Bradford started monthly tours in American Sign Language, established a program for individuals with memory loss, and brought in medical students to learn soft skills to apply in their caregiving. 'I was a sub-department of one,' she joked to writer Emma Cieslik, who spoke with Bradford over Zoom and at the NGA about her own circuitous path into the profession, and the future of the field of museum accessibility.
Unlike Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelite paintings of winsome maidens surrounded by flowers, the 1877 chalk portrait of his sister offers a flat, realistic impression. She wears an impenetrable expression and dull-colored clothing that blends into an unadorned background. The somber tone is the product of family tragedy: Christina remains in mourning following the death of her older sister Maria, a writer and Anglican nun, in 1876.
An excavation in central London has uncovered the remains of a boys school complete with artifacts from the students' schoolwork and their playtime. The objects include a slate tablet used as an erasable notebook to practice handwriting, a slate pencil and several ceramic alleys marbles made of decorated white ceramic from the Victorian era. Artifacts related to children's lives are less frequently found than ones relating to adults, so these objects give us a special glimpse into the lives of schoolboys.
A Victorian drinking fountain has been restored to its original location following conservation, but it is not fully functional and cannot dispense drinking water. The Princes Circus fountain was installed in 1879 to commemorate Queen Victoria's 60th year on the throne, but was originally in a different location. It used to be a bit further north, on the junction of New Oxford Street and Shaftesbury Avenue, opposite Coptic Street. In 2003, it was moved to sit in a fenced-off island space outside the Shaftesbury Theatre.
For decades, two watercolors hung unassumingly in a family home in London. Only recently did the residents discover the works' storied pedigree: they are original illustrations created for a 1903 edition of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book , which were long thought lost. Now, the two watercolors, which depict scenes from Kipling's celebrated collection of short stories, are emerging on the auction block at Roseberys in London.
Renais­sance artist Albrecht Dür­er (1471-1528) nev­er saw a rhi­no him­self, but by rely­ing on eye­wit­ness descrip­tions of the one King Manuel I of Por­tu­gal intend­ed as a gift to the Pope, he man­aged to ren­der a fair­ly real­is­tic one, all things con­sid­ered.
