Latest news with #V&A
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'I visited the UK city famous for jam - it's changed completely'
Scotland's fourth biggest city used to be famous for the three Js…jute, jam and journalism. But now Dundee's J, J & J have been replaced – by the V&A! Part of the city's £1billion waterfront regeneration, this super-modern design museum – the first V&A outside of London – celebrates Scotland's influence in fashion, architecture, innovation and culture. It was devised by esteemed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma – the man behind Tokyo's Olympic Stadium – with 2,500 exterior stone panels to emulate Scotland's rugged coastal cliffs. The interior whips your breath away too. Its full height atrium is filled with light and texture and a wide sweeping staircase linking the ground and first floors adds to the feeling of space. When we visited it was filled with a Shylight installation, where large silk flowers bobbed up and down while opening and closing. Upstairs houses three galleries and the Oak Room – an original two-storey tearoom by Charles Rennie Mackintosh that was discovered in pieces ready for scrap – and currently there's a colour-filled Garden Futures: Designing with Nature ticketed exhibition focusing on our passion for gardens. We couldn't leave without popping into the V&A's Tatha restaurant where floor-to-ceiling windows provide views down the River Tay. Their Taste Of Tayside afternoon tea went down a treat, with delicious locally inspired nibbles such as a haggis and cheddar scone, a Forfar Bridie – a semi-circular mince beef pie – and a mini Dundee fruit cake. Next door was another prime attraction: RRS Discovery, Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic exploration ship. Scott and his crew, including Ernest Shackleton, travelled further south than anyone before aboard this Royal Research Ship between 1901 and 1904, defying tempestuous seas, blizzards and -45C temperatures to carry out pioneering research. Both the immaculately preserved ship and an immersive museum give you a glimpse into the crew's incredible ingenuity and the hardship they faced. Such was the cold that ice would form on sailors' bunks. The officers' saloon was used as an operating theatre when the ship's doctor had to remove a man's cyst. Meanwhile zoologist Edward Wilson, who reared two emperor penguins in his cabin, would defrost animal specimens in front of the stove, causing putrid smells (adult £13, child £7, ). Dundee was once the UK hub for making jute (a fibre used for cord, cloth and sacks), employing 50,000 people in more than 120 mills and earning the city the moniker 'Juteopolis'. It also became famous for another J…jam. Janet Keiller created the first ever marmalade while trying to use up bitter Seville oranges. Her son James developed it and launched the world-renowned Keiller's jam and marmalade brand, once Britain's largest confectionery company. Publishers DC Thomson gave the city its third J… journalism. Established 120 years ago, it became famous for The Beano and The Dandy as well as several newspapers. Today, Dundee is a UNESCO City Of Design, busy yet compact and packed with independent shops and cafes, fine architecture and plenty of green spaces. On the way up there my husband Tim and I had a whale of a time on the Caledonian Sleeper, a night train that leaves London Euston most evenings. Standard tickets provide you with a reclining seat but upgrading to Club as we did gives you a twin bunk room with a sink, small en-suite with toilet and shower and comfy beds with duvets – and access to an on-board Club Car. It costs more but saves another night in a hotel, which helps even it out. And we found a meal in the Club Car – appropriately we went for haggis, neeps and tatties served by the cheerful Natalie – plus a wee tipple from the bar helped ensure a smooth sleep. I loved the novelty of going to bed in one place and waking up in another, although the downside came with the slightly daunting 6am arrival. Once in Dundee the Malmaison hotel proved to be a fabulous place to stay, handily located in a magnificent Victorian building steps away from the station. Staff were friendly, breakfasts were hearty and our stylish black and burgundy room provided views out towards the Tay, while the hotel's fabulous wrought iron spiral staircase was a city landmark in itself. For a closer look at the Tay, we hired e-bikes from Dundee Cycle Hub and peddled east along the wide riverside cycle-and-footpath, through the docks and past grand houses built by jute tycoons and pretty fishermen's cottages. We made it to Broughty Ferry, where we peeled off for a cuppa, a look at its 15th century castle, and a browse around stores selling crafts and local produce ( ). Back in Dundee, we visited another historic ship, HMS Unicorn, the oldest surviving vessel in Scotland. Although built as a warship, she never saw action after her 1824 launch so wasn't fitted out with masts and rigging. Instead she was used as a Royal Navy training ship and had a roof installed to protect her from the weather, giving her an eye-catching charm. Today you can wander around the cramped quarters that would have slept up to 300 crew, explore the gun deck, see the captain's smart quarters and learn about the mammoth fundraising effort for urgent repairs and a move to a new dock (adult £9.20, child £4.60, In need of a holiday? With the summer in full swing, the Mirror has launched its very own Travel WhatsApp community where you'll get all the latest holiday recommendations from our travel experts straight to your WhatsApp. We'll send you the latest breaking updates and exclusives all directly to your phone. Users must download or already have WhatsApp on their phones to join in. All you have to do to join is , select 'Join Chat' and you're in! We may also send you stories from other titles across the Reach group. We will also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose Exit group. If you're curious, you can read our . Back on dry land, I loved the city's cobbled streets and beautiful old buildings such as Verdant Works museum, set in a refurbished jute mill, and the grand McManus museum and gallery. Dundee's food came up trumps too. The delightful Empire State Coffee was perfect for brunch with huge cakes and cappuccinos made with beans roasted on site. At Daisy Tasker, tucked away in a former mill, we enjoyed succulent steaks alongside a pint of local brew. And at the delightful Gallery 48 we picked our way through platefuls of tasty Spanish tapas, including tuna belly with olive tapenade and artichoke, aubergine baked with honey and haggis croquettes. Gallery 48's gin menu was impressive too. I counted 56, several from the local area, with the James Keiller (he of jam fame) Dundee Dry Gin, infused with Seville orange in a nod to marmalade. On the way home we opted for one of LNER's three direct services back to London King's Cross, which took under six hours. For more options you can also change at Edinburgh. This time we certainly didn't want to sleep – the views were tremendous, with rolling hills and pretty coastal villages, the Firth of Forth and Newcastle's famous bridges. With the sleeper on the way up and the daytime service home – and Dundee 'jammed' in the middle – we'd experienced the best of all worlds.
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
3 Scottish destinations among the best UK family days out
Why these attractions in Scotland have been named among the best family days out in the UK These are the three Scottish spots that have been named among the best family days out in the UK by The Times. Cairngorm Mountain resort, The Highlands Located in the "wild heart" of the Highlands, Cairngorms Mountain resort is a "guaranteed family hit". Kids can explore an adventure playground or go down the tubing slides, while older children can "blaze a trail" at the mountain bike park. For wildlife lovers, there is a two-hour guided hill trip to see, feed and take photos with the UK's only free-roaming reindeer herd. Here, there's also a chance to spot native wildlife such as the tiger moth and rock ptarmigan. Urquhart Castle, The Highlands Urquhart Castle (Image: Getty Images) Urquhart Castle, which is set dramatically on a rocky outcrop overlooking Loch Ness, should "fire the imagination of any little one," according to the publication. From the "murderous physics" of a full-size trebuchet to a dark and grim prison cell, there is plenty to see and do. Recommended Reading: Discovery Point, Dundee Discovery Point and V&A in Dundee (Image: Getty Images) The Royal Research Ship Discovery, a three-masted barque used by Captain Scott on his Antarctic voyage in 1901, is docked at Dundee and open to visitors. Those coming here can climb aboard to learn about its fascinating history and ongoing restoration. After its famed expedition, it was used as a merchant ship and again as a research vessel before spending decades as a training ship and hostel for Sea Scouts.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on a new era for museums: letting the public take control
The museum of the future has arrived and it looks like an Amazon warehouse. But art critics have unanimously awarded it five stars. From Saturday, visitors to the V&A East Storehouse in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will be able to wander among the 250,000 objects in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection that are not on display in its west London home. The headline-grabbing order-an-object initiative means you can book online to get your hands (gloves are provided) on a priceless artefact any day you like. And all for free. It is a triumph born out of necessity. After the V&A's eviction from their Kensington storage home a decade ago, they decided that instead of hiding one of the world's largest design collections in an expensive warehouse, they would turn it into an attraction in its own right. Storage is a big issue for institutions: only 1% of the British Museum's more than 8m artefacts are on public display. Showing off your overflowing attic makes the most of what you've already got, repurposing a closet that, for the V&A, includes a Balenciaga gown (the most requested item so far) and PJ Harvey's hotpants. Open-access storage is not a new idea. In 2021, the Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam became the first purpose-built (and presumably the only Ikea-salad bowl-inspired) public art-storage destination. The V&A Storehouse takes a leap further. You are invited behind the scenes of the museum, where everything is jumbled together and conservators are at work – a giant version of the BBC's The Repair Shop. Like the children who run away to New York's Metropolitan Museum for a week in EL Konigsburg's classic 1967 novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, visitors are able to explore freely. 'We wanted people to feel like they're trespassing,' said Tim Reeve, the deputy director of the V&A. 'That feeling of joy, seeing behind the curtain.' Part of the V&A's mission was to inspire innovation, to be a bit radical. Ordering an object is a user-friendly way of engaging newcomers, not just a click-and-collect for art lovers. Like Sadler's Wells, which also launched a Stratford venue earlier this year, the V&A hopes to draw in a younger audience who may have felt excluded from its stately South Kensington home. A sister V&A East Museum will open close to the Storehouse next year. Putting everything on show cannot get over uncomfortable questions about the provenance of a museum's acquisitions. But it does give transparency to how the museum works and what – down to every last pin – it has got. This week, Manchester Museum won the European museum of the year award for its own approach to opening up the curatorial process. As part of its revamp in 2023, the museum handed its new South Asia gallery to a collective of 30 people from Manchester's diaspora communities to design and fill as they chose. The top floor has been given over to a college for neurodivergent students, with a London campus opening at the Design Museum in September. The pandemic, as well as funding and sponsorship crises and anxieties over legacy, have put institutions under pressure. Both the V&A East Storehouse and Manchester Museum show bold new ways forward. They mark a shift in how museums perceive their role. They remind us that these collections are our collections. Fill your basket.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Picture This: The jeweller whose designs have never gone out of style
Cartier ed. by Helen Molesworth and Rachel Garrahan (V&A Publishing £35, 256pp) The new Cartier exhibition at the V&A is collated of 350 historic and iconic pieces from the historical jeweller's archive. Curated by Helen Molesworth and Rachel Garrahan, and created by Asif Khan, the show is an immersive experience that celebrates the enduring allure of Cartier. 'I wanted this exhibition to evoke a world, crossing time, senses, and cultures,' says Khan. 'Cartier's creations are suspended in textural landscapes, cloudscapes, light and sound - allowing history to breathe and the future to linger.' On display are famed creations such as the Tank watch, the Trinity ring, and the ever-popular Love bracelet, alongside extraordinary personal pieces once owned by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly, including Kelly's engagement ring. This companion book, edited by Molesworth and Garrahan, offers a rich visual and historical narrative of the Maison. It traces Cartier's deep connections to British royalty and other notable figures, explores the evolution of its signature styles, and reveals the craftsmanship behind its most recognisable designs. As the book makes clear, Cartier has never stood still - constantly reinterpreting its heritage to stay at the forefront of contemporary design.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Look east: an exhilarating weekend in London's new cultural quarter
There's a collective intake of breath as the curator slowly unzips the white garment bag to reveal the treasure within: a white military-style jacket embellished with gold buttons and epaulettes, worn by Elton John on his 1981 World tour. To my left, laid out on a table, are a gold Versace bag and a pair of daintily embroidered blue silk shoes dating from the 1720s. To my right, a Vivienne Westwood corset and a Balenciaga pink taffeta evening dress from the 1950s. It's a fashion lover's fever dream and it's all here, at my fingertips. I'm at the V&A Storehouse in east London, a radical new museum experience that allows anyone to order up any item from the V&A's vast collection – for free – and to examine it at close quarters. Housed in the former Olympics Media Centre, on the edge of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, this lofty warehouse space gives unprecedented access to more than 250,000 objects, from an 11m wide stage cloth designed by Picasso to a cross-section of a maisonette from the Robin Hood Gardens council estate in Poplar. Gone are the glass cases, white walls and carefully curated exhibits of a traditional museum space. Instead, visitors are invited to look behind the scenes of a working museum, to wander among open shelves stacked high with deliriously eclectic objects and to peer into the workshops where conservators are at work. The effect is part Ikea store, part Victorian cabinet of curiosities. It's bonkers, exhilarating and I love it. The opening of this new V&A outpost marks the latest chapter in the reinvention of the Olympic Park as a 'new cultural quarter' for London. At the time of the London 2012 games, I lived in Bow, on the edge of the Olympic Park. On the night of the opening ceremony we watched from the window of my flat as fireworks lit up the sky above the stadium. It was the culmination of one of the most ambitious regeneration projects that London had ever seen and we had a ringside seat as this brave new world rose up from a 560-acre brownfield site. As well as providing a deprived area of east London with world-class sporting facilities, part of the Olympic legacy was the promise to build a new creative hub, somewhere that would inspire locals and visitors alike. We moved out of the area shortly after the games finished, so I was curious to see for myself whether that promise had been fulfilled. On a bright spring morning the park is quietly humming with activity. Teenagers glide along wide boulevards on roller skates and toddlers play in the water fountains in front of the London Stadium. On the canal, families drift by in pedalos in the shape of white swans, watched over by Zaha Hadid's imposing Aquatic Centre which carves a graceful arc in the blue sky. My daughter and I make a beeline for a cluster of new buildings which are lined up along the canal. The East Bank project represents the largest single investment in culture by a London mayor since the Great Exhibition of 1851. The first phase launched in 2023 with the opening of cutting-edge new campuses for University College London (UCL) and the London College of Fashion. Both sites have been designed to be open and accessible to the public. So you can wander into the reception of UCL East and see public art installations – on our visit Luke Jerram's 'Gaia', an inflatable replica of the Earth, was floating serenely above the atrium – or head to the cafe where your coffee will be delivered to you by a robot waiter. At the London College of Fashion, the public areas host regular showcases of student work. We stroll around the lobby, all bare concrete and curving staircases, and admire a display of outlandish undergraduate creations – although my daughter is even more transfixed by the cutting edge outfits the fashion students are wearing. Next door is Sadler's Wells East, a new outpost of the dance theatre which opened in February. The open-plan foyer is home to a light-filled bar, cafe and dance space – when we drop in for a coffee there's a community dance class in mid-flow. The 550-seat auditorium will provide a home for visiting dance companies of every genre, from ballet to hip-hop. We have booked tickets for that evening's show, a family-friendly performance of Snow White by the balletLorent. Our next stop is the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the twisted red steel sculpture that towers over the Olympic Park. We take the lift up to the viewing platform, a dizzying 80m above the ground. Far below us the London Stadium, now home to West Ham football club, is laid out like a Subbuteo pitch. As a general rule of thumb, I try to avoid any activity that involves having to don an Australian Rules Football helmet and elbow protectors. And yet here I am, joining the queue of teenagers waiting to launch themselves feet first down the Helix, the high-speed helter skelter that snakes around the outside of Anish Kapoor's look-at-me landmark. My teenage daughter takes one look at the foam helmet and refuses to go any further. 'It's just a big slide!' I tell her. 'Come on, it'll be fun!' These words – and others that cannot be published here – ring in my ears as I corkscrew down the metal tube at terrifying speed, emerging 40 seconds later feeling like I've been flushed down the S-bend. My sensible daughter has taken the lift down and is waiting for me at the bottom. 'Oh Mum,' she says. One of the side-effects of this area's transformation has been a burgeoning of the local food scene, from the world's first zero-waste restaurant, Silo in Hackney Wick, to Barge East, a floating bar and restaurant moored in the shadow of the London Stadium. We've booked a table at Hera, one of the park's newest openings, which has been winning accolades for its authentic Greek food. Sign up to The Traveller Get travel inspiration, featured trips and local tips for your next break, as well as the latest deals from Guardian Holidays after newsletter promotion It does not disappoint. From the basket of homemade bread and dip of smoked aubergine with thyme, honey and balsamic vinegar, to the elegant sea bass carpaccio and charcoal-grilled chicken skewers, everything is sensational. But the standout dish is the feta saganaki – feta cheese, wrapped in angel hair, deep-fried and drizzled with lemon honey. My daughter and I are still dreaming about it weeks later. It's the kind of lunch that needs to be followed by a long walk, so we trace the course of the canal, fringed with head-high whispering grasses, into the northern half of the park, eventually reaching the iconic Olympic rings – which have found a permanent home on a raised mound overlooking the Lee Valley VeloPark. A group of women dressed head to toe in sequins shimmer past in the late afternoon sunshine, on their way to Abba Voyage. The virtual concert experience has attracted more than two million visitors since opening in a purpose-built arena on the edge of the Olympic Park in 2022. In September, they will be joined by an army of David Bowie fans when the V&A Storehouse becomes the new home of the David Bowie archive, comprising stage costumes, song lyrics, instruments, makeup charts and sketches. And there's more to come. Next year will see the relocation of the BBC Music Studios from Maida Vale to Stratford and the opening of the V&A East museum in a striking new building inspired, apparently, by an X-ray of a Balenciaga dress. I've enjoyed being a tourist on my old home turf. It may not have the gravitas of South Kensington, the architectural cohesion of the South Bank Centre or the neoclassical elegance of Covent Garden, but East Bank is an invigorating and inspiring addition to London's cultural scene. And it's fun. Where else can you slide down Britain's tallest sculpture, handle vintage haute couture, or dance in front of an Abba avatar, all in one day? Information on visiting East Bank and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park:
