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| Address: |
Cromwell Road, South Kensington,
London SW7 2RL |
Tel:
Fax: |
020 7942 2000
020 7942 2266 |
| Website: |
www.vam.ac.uk |
The V&A is the greatest museum of applied
and decorative arts in the world. Explore the breathtaking permanent
collections from the four corners of the globe including fashion
and textiles, sculpture, ceramics and glass, metalwork, silver and
jewellery, furniture, photography and paintings.
1999, the V&A held the first ever international
exhibition on the artistic traditions of the Panjab under Sikh rule
to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Khalsa. Major
museums in the UK, France, Ireland, India, Pakistan and the USA,
the British Royal Collection, and private collectors in Pakistan
and the USA, all lent important objects, and the V&A showed
famous items such as Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Golden Throne from
its own collection.
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The Victoria and Albert Museum was founded
in 1852 as the South Kensington Museum, and later absorbed the collections
of the Indian Museum, established by the East India Company in 1799.
Both museums collected Indian decorative art and paintings, including
material from the Panjab dating from the late 16th to the 19th century.
They also bought extensively from the international exhibitions of
the second half of the 19th century.
paintings, arms and armour, textiles and tiles to extremely varied
examples of the work of artists and crafts people from all over the
region during the
periods of Sikh and British rule. It also
includes watercolours and important early photographs by Europeans
visiting the region in the 19th century. The Museum's collections
thus provided the foundation for the major exhibition, The Arts of
the Sikh Kingdoms, shown at the V&A from March to June 1999 before
travelling to San Francisco and Toronto.
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