Latest news with #Victoria&AlbertMuseum
NZ Herald
31-07-2025
- Business
- NZ Herald
Auckland Museum asbestos issue impacts tourism, $2.5m revenue drop
The financial hit was attributed to the loss of the Māori Court, leading to offering half-price entrance fees for international tourists, he said. 'When we briefly had it at full price, the push back was so enormous that we took the prudent decision to offer it at half price. Even so, we are seeing tourists walk away, which is incredibly sad. 'It's a serious dent in our revenue,' Reeves said. Last financial year, the museum earned about $3.3m from admission charges. Reeves told councillors the source of the asbestos is in the Māori Court, where there are remnants of asbestos dust in the ceiling from a job in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which is being distributed around the building from a century-old ventilation system. He said the asbestos is extraordinarily hard to reach because there is a curved roof on top of a curved ceiling, and it is too small for a person to get into. When fire alarms go off, it is believed that the massive smoke extraction fans are disturbing the asbestos dust and causing the problems, Reeves said. Costumes in the Diva exhibition at Auckland Museum. He said closing the gallery was affecting the museum's tourism offer, but the southern two-thirds of the museum remained open, including the Diva exhibition from London's Victoria & Albert Museum, featuring gowns by the likes of Rihanna and Lady Gaga. The methodology for removing the asbestos, time and cost were still being worked out, said Reeves, who hoped the museum would have six galleries in the old building reopened by October. Asked by councillor Chris Darby about the asbestos risk, Reeves said there had been nearly 2000 air tests for asbestos at the museum since May, and not one had shown a result above the WorkSafe limit for safe occupation. 'We are as confident as we can be, for our staff, our volunteers, our visitors, that in the areas of the building that are open, we have not presented an undue risk,' he said. Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Sky News AU
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
'She has a real passion': Princess Catherine's heartfelt personal message unveiled during Wales family holiday as part of new V&A exhibition
Princess Catherine's personal message for a new exhibition has been unveiled at the Victoria & Albert Museum- even as she continues to enjoy a summer holiday with her family. The 43-year-old royal is currently in Greece with Prince William, their three children, and her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, according to reports. But back in London, the Victoria & Albert Museum has revealed a note she penned as part of her latest project: curating the Makers and Creators exhibition at the newly opened V&A East Storehouse in Stratford. "Objects can tell a story. A collection of objects can create a narrative, both about our past and as inspiration for the future," the Princess wrote in the message, which was officially unveiled on Wednesday. "This display celebrates our past makers and creators and illustrates how much historic objects can influence fashion, design, film, art and creativity today. "Individual, unique objects can come together to create a collective whole that helps us to explore our social and cultural experiences and the role we play in the wider tapestry of life." The exhibition includes a number of items personally selected by the Princess, among them, a Victorian Morris & Co furnishing screen designed by William Morris' assistant John Henry Dearle, a stage costume by famed designer Oliver Messel, and a watercolour painting by children's author Beatrix Potter. Also featured are a nearly 200-year-old Welsh quilt, a medieval Somerset church tile, a mid-17th century Qing dynasty porcelain vase, a sculpture by Clemence Dane, and a childhood photo album belonging to Beatrix Potter's father, Rupert Potter. Catherine, who became the museum's first royal patron in 2018, visited the East London museum last month, leaving a strong impression on staff, according to V&A Director Dr Tristram Hunt. "The Princess is really passionate about the objects, whether it was the photography collection, or whether it was the two woven silks by William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite paintings," he told HELLO!. "She has a real passion for the V&A collections and then a lot of knowledge around making and the processes of making, she was really keen on. "And then she just loved that idea of getting behind the scenes of the museum, allowing the public access to those areas people don't normally get to see." Known for her love of art and photography, Princess Catherine studied History of Art at the University of St Andrews, where she famously met her future husband and secured her royal fate. The Wales family are due back in Windsor in early September as the new school year begins, and are also expected to join King Charles, Queen Camilla and the wider royal family at Balmoral in the coming weeks.
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Skeletons, Tears and Lobsters: Schiaparelli Exhibition to Open in 2026
Updated at 3:56 p.m. ET on July 9 The Victoria & Albert Museum's next fashion exhibition will take a surreal turn.'Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art' will be staged at the Sainsbury Gallery from March 21 to Nov. 1, exhibition will chart the success of its founder, Elsa Schiaparelli, from the 1920s to the present day under the current ownership of Diego Della Valle and the creative direction of Daniel will be more than 200 objects in the show that span across Paris, London and New York, as well as World Wars I and II, including garments, accessories, jewelry, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture, perfumes and archive Bellini, chief executive officer of Schiaparelli, was joined by Daniel Slater, director of exhibitions at the V&A, and the museum's senior curator Sonnet Stanfill, at a press conference on Wednesday at the house's historic salon on Place Vendôme in Paris.'The V&A is one of the unique museums, which has always tried to blend tradition and innovation, and this is so linked to what Schiaparelli used to do herself,' Bellini years in the making, the show will not just build on the success of previous exhibitions, including a major retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2022, but explore new areas including Schiaparelli's relationship with the U.K. and her clients, such as Wallis Simpson and Elsie de Wolfe, known as Lady Mendl. More from WWD EXCLUSIVE: Dinh Van to Mark 60th Anniversary With Christie's Retrospective in Paris Cos Heads to India, Plots Return to New York Fashion Week In 'Semele,' Heartbreak Is Dressed Up in Lace and Diamonds 'We're adding on to the existing scholarship, but telling the story in a very new way, in a very unique way,' Stanfill said. 'We like to describe ourselves as the world's leading museum of art, design and performance, and in fact, all of those elements, plus a chapter on photography, will be within the exhibition.'Slater noted that the show will also include works by some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, on loan from major institutions. Schiaparelli walked in artistic circles with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray.'What was so exciting for us is that with a project on Schiaparelli, you almost reverse what is the normal narrative of fashion in art museums, where you have designers being inspired by art. What we have with Elsa, which continues in the house today, is one of the greatest designers who is actually inspiring some of the greatest art of the 20th century,' Slater said.'This is not to redo something that's formulaic. This is to entirely change the way in which fashion can be experienced in a fine art museum,' he added. 'We're trying to constantly build the next generation of creatives. And this is just yet another opportunity for us to do that.'Special pieces on display include the Skeleton dress from 1938, which covers the entire body in a black silk crêpe. In a 1939 interview, Schiaparelli said that she believes 'in a strict neatness about both day and evening clothes, their simple lines accentuated by an original touch. A neck line can make or spoil a dress; amusing pockets can add distinction to the simplest jacket.'Another standout piece that will feature is the Tears dress from 1938 made in collaboration with the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. Printed with a trompe-l'oeil motif, it creates the illusion of strips of flesh, prefiguring the punk movement by several decades. Born into an aristocratic family and raised in the luxurious confines of Palazzo Corsini in Rome, Schiaparelli was separated from her husband by the time she arrived in Paris from the U.S. in noted that the designer, who was self-financed at the time, opened a London salon in Mayfair in 1933, barely six years after founding her house. 'It's also important to see her, not only as an artist, but as a woman entrepreneur, and this is very inspiring also for today's women,' she said. Stanfill added that Schiaparelli was a founding member of the Fashion Group of Great Britain, the precursor of today's British Fashion Council.'Her clothes had a hard chic about them, which were in contrast to the quiet luxury of a lot of her contemporaries. So as a disruptor and as a breaker of fashion rules, she encouraged her clients to embrace a different way of dressing,' she said.'She was the most inventive in terms of use of materials of any of her contemporaries, in the sense that she urged her textile producers to bring her their newest and their best — so that could take the guise of woven glass, cellophane, new crinkled textures. She really loved unusual fabrics, and that will come across in the garments that we can display,' Stanfill also designed costumes for the silver screen and stage. She costumed Mae West in the 1937 film 'Every Day's a Holiday' and borrowed the actor's curvy silhouette for one of her perfume bottle designs. In 1952, she dressed Zsa Zsa Gabor in a pink gown in the film 'Moulin Rouge.' The designer is a recurring character in fashion history books. She famously feuded with Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel, but had to shut her business in 1954 after accruing large was relaunched by Della Valle in 2012 and the house has spread the word about the history of its founder, starting with a book titled 'Schiaparelli and the Artists,' published in 2017 to mark the 90th anniversary of the brand. The exhibition will also include a selection of designs by Roseberry. 'The couture collection that we presented on Monday is really the beautiful translation of how we can dive into the archives, but also transport them into the future and see how Schiaparelli's contribution to fashion, art and culture can continue to survive through the lens of a new creative vision with passion and actually no boundaries,' Bellini said.'The more respectful we are, and the more inventive we are, the more vibration we create outside. It's extremely rewarding, and it allows us to take new steps,' she said. Best of WWD Fashion Meets Cinema: Jaws 50th Anniversary and Calvin Klein Spring 2019 RTW Show Retro Glamour: Giorgio Di Sant'Angelo's Summer 1973 Chic Straw Hat Statement The Story Behind Jackie Kennedy's Cartier Watch: A Royal Gift With 'Traces and Clues of Her Life' Revealed
Business of Fashion
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Business of Fashion
V&A to Stage Schiaparelli Exhibition in London
London's Victoria & Albert Museum will stage an exhibition dedicated to the house of Schiaparelli — 'Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art' — opening 21st March 2026. The show will examine Elsa Schiaparelli's impact on art, fashion, and performance, with a display of over 200 items, including her surrealist 'Skeleton' and 'Tears' dresses made in collaboration with Salvador Dalí. Works by Picasso and Man Ray will also be shown, as well as current Schiaparelli designer Daniel Roseberry's interpretations of the founder's legacy. Learn more: Schiaparelli: A Swan Song That Fused Then and Now Daniel Roseberry plans radical changes at the house, so he saw Monday's couture show as a farewell to the old Schiap, making peace with the past to clear the decks for things to come.
Hindustan Times
28-06-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
The scenic root: A look at the ancient and modern history of the garden
Heaven is a well-laid garden. Or at least, the Ancient Persians thought so. A 17th-century tile panel from Isfahan, Iran, representing the Persian chahar-bagh. (Grant Anderson) The word paradise is derived from the Persian paradaijah, literally, 'walled enclosure'. As far back as 6th century BCE, the paradaijah was organised as a chahar-bagh, a set of its four swathes of green, each meant to embody one of the vital elements of the universe: earth, fire, water and air. Long, long before this, c. 1000 BCE, royal gardens in China featured intricately designed landscapes that often sought to marry myth with idealised forms of nature. How did such ideas evolve over time, to yield the neighbourhood parks of today? An intriguing exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in Dundee (the first V&A outside London) traces the history of these miniature worlds. Garden Futures: Designing with Nature is on view until January. Through exhibits that range from ancient and contemporary paintings to photographs, tools, plant specimens, and interactive multimedia installations, the show traces how the idea of the garden goes all the way back to, well, one idea of the start of it all. In the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the Garden of Eden represents the beginning of life itself. Exhibits at the show explore how these spaces have always served as sanctuaries; attempts, in increasingly dense, urban built environments, to let a bit of nature back in. In this role, they have acquired social, political and environmental connotations. Even today, or perhaps more so today, they are a statement of access, luxury, power, wealth. So how have our gardens grown, around the world? * China, c. 1000 BCE A 16th-century painting of scholars in a Chinese garden. (Getty Images) Myth and nature merge in the earliest signs of royal gardens here, dating to 1000 BCE. By the 3rd century BCE, there are records of the Qin emperor Shi Huang building a park with a lake and an island at the centre, inspired by legends of an island of immortals. In the Han dynasty that succeeded the Qin, rare plants and animals were housed in royal parks, in a template that spread as noblemen began to design their grounds on similar lines. Through the centuries, scaled-down waterways, rockeries, dwellings, bridges and plants sought to represent the whole of creation, in miniature scale. Over time, the precursor to the zen garden took shape, built around gongshi or scholar's rocks (essentially, boulders shaped by nature in such intriguing ways that one could spend hours in their contemplation). At V&A Dundee, a watercolour titled A Painting of a Chinese Garden, Guangzhou (c. 1820-1840) bears testament to this past. * France, in the 1500s A view of a parterre at the Palace of Versailles. (Adobe Stock) By the 1500s (civilisation dawning considerably later in the West), the French were designing intricate parterre (literally, 'on the ground') flowerbeds meant to be viewed from a height — essentially, from the terrace or higher floors of a chateau. Surviving parterres such as those at the Palace of Versailles reflect Renaissance ideals of beauty, symmetry and order. Also, luxury, via precise ornamentation. Some of the designs were so intricate, they were referred to as broderie sur la terre or 'embroidery on the ground'. At the V&A exhibit, this style is showcased via a fine-art reproduction of a sketch by the renowned 17th-century landscape architect Claude Mollet. His best-known work is still painstakingly maintained, at the Palace of Versailles. * England, in the 1700s John Gendall's depiction of a hermitage at the British royal family's Frogmore Estate in Windsor. (Getty) By the 18th century, pioneers such as Lancelot 'Capability' Brown were looking to contemporary art for inspiration. Inspired by the Picturesque Movement (a mid-18th-century style that sought to 'represent the ideal'), gardens designed by Brown and others sought to mimic idealised natural landscapes using cedar, beech and linden trees and sweeping lawns. These parks were marked by a near-total absence of flowers. Some of these gardens featured 'hermitages', whimsical retreats meant for rest and contemplation. In some cases, eccentric lords of the manor even hired a 'hermit' to play out the life of a romantic recluse and complete the picture. Engraved prints by artists of the time such as John Gendall and JP Neale offer intricate views of such gardens, complete with hermitages (but not hermits) * USA, in the 20th century Artist J Howard Miller's poster for the Victory Gardens initiative. (V&A Dundee) In the early 1940s, Victory Gardens produced up to 40% of America's fruits and vegetables, according to data from the US National WWII Museum. A government campaign that urged residents to grow their own food amid critical shortages, trade disruptions and broken supply chains was so successful that 20 million such gardens grew up across America, the museum data states. A poster that reads Plant a Garden for Victory!, by the artist J Howard Miller, is part of the V&A Dundee exhibit, inviting the viewer to reconsider a proven model in our current times of need. * India: Then and now While India does not form part of the V&A exhibit, it is interesting to note that the entire arc represented in the four-room display at the museum is visible in a number of our cities today. In northern India, parks and monuments still bear the mark of the ornate Mughal-era designs that were influenced by the Persian chahar-bagh — think rectilinear walled sections, large pools, canals, fountains and flowers. Alongside, we have the colonial-era import of the botanical gardens, in which the British originally attempted to recreate English shrubbery, and then began to preserve and showcase specimens of local varieties too. . Artistic and cultural movements continue to influence the way gardens look. These spaces can also be agents of change, says exhibition co-curator James Wylie. One actionable way to redraw the norm would be 'to look into our immediate environments and ask: Are there ways to encourage pollinators, or different modes of wildlife? To reach beyond manicured lawns and hedges, to create a wild, rich environment that encourages diversity of life?' Wylie adds. 'Because the ideal garden, in our times, is one in which our influence is negligible.'
