V&A Museum receives Museum of the Year award

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Jul 8, 2016

Fashion and design museum Victoria and Albert has received the ultimate recognition from the Art Fund. In an award ceremony held at the Natural History Museum in London, Victoria & Albert was named as the winner of the Museum of the Year 2016 award, presented by HRH The Duchess of Cambridge.

Stephen Deuchar, Art Fund director and chair of the judges, said: “The V&A experience is an unforgettable one. Its recent exhibitions, from Alexander McQueen to The Fabric of India, and the opening of its new Europe 1600–1815 galleries, were all exceptional accomplishments – at once entertaining and challenging, rooted in contemporary scholarship, and designed to reach and affect the lives of a large and diverse national audience. It was already one of the best-loved museums in the country: this year it has indisputably become one of the best museums in the world.”

The Art Fund Museum of the Year award is the biggest museum prize in the world. It celebrates each year a museum that has achieved exceptional levels of innovation in the past 12 months and awards it with £100,000.

2015 was a turning point for Victoria & Albert Museum as it hosted its most-visited exhibition, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, with record breaking 493,043 visitors from 87 countries.

“The V&A is thriving as a world-class museum and centre of excellence for research and expertise. This award not only allows us to celebrate our achievements over the past year, but it will progress our ambitions to continue to transform our building and make our unparalleled collections of art and design accessible to the widest possible audiences in the UK and overseas,” said Martin Roth, director of the V&A.

In the past few months, the V&A has also announced new partnerships with State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and Vogue Russia to collectively develop a major exhibition focussed on Russia and plans to open a new gallery with Smithsonian Institute.