Next month, London’s Victoria and Albert museum will embark upon a dramatic curatorial experiment that seeks to keep the institution apace with changes in modern material culture.
In a controversial but daring evolution in its museological ethos, the Victoria and Albert museum will soon open a new gallery space dedicated to what Senior Curator of Contemporary Architecture, Design and Digital Kieran Long has dubbed “Rapid Response Collecting”. This tactic acknowledges the accelerating pace at which the contemporary design environment now develops, accepts and supersedes its paradigms in a hyper-networked and globalised economy. Responsiveness is the watchword here, and the gallery will regularly be updated with new items as the major cultural, political and technological events of the day dictate. As Long comments: “The V&A has always strived to understand social history through objects of design, art and architecture, and with this new strategy we are bringing that social commitment to bear on the contemporary world.”
Some of the first objects to land will include: a sample of KONE UltraRope, a new lightweight and super strong carbon-fibre lift cable that will dramatically increase the potential height of buildings; ‘the liberator’, the world’s first 3D printed gun, designed by Texas Law student Cody Wilson and an object that pricked the dreams of a benign future that many previously associated with this sort of rapid prototyping technology; and a pair of Primark jeans that stand as an example of the sort of ultra-cheap garments that were being manufactured for Western markets in the infamous Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh, which fatally collapsed in 2013, killing 1129 workers.
As Corinna Gardner, Curator of Contemporary Product Design at the V&A and Curator of Rapid Response Collecting, has stated: “Much of the commentary in the media around the Rana Plaza disaster was about international labour laws, building control in Bangladesh and the responsibilities of global corporations and of consumers. But at its heart was a material thing: a pair of jeans that you can buy on any British high street. By bringing these designed objects into the Museum we can explore contemporary issues and events that can seem remote or abstract.”
This free display will be located in the V&A’s Gallery 74 from 5 July, 2014.
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