The New V&A Photography Centre

The new Photography Centre at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) will open in the Autumn. Yesterday the Museum:

• released the first visual of what one of the largest galleries within a suite of rooms will look like - in its full 'state-of-the-art' glory
• confirmed the first phase of the V&A Photography Centre will more than double the display space dedicated to photography by Autumn 2018
• announced that the original nineteenth-century picture gallery (known as Gallery 100) will be renamed ‘The Bern and Ronny Schwartz Gallery’ in recognition of the generosity of The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation

The render gives a glimpse inside one of the largest galleries
that will sit within the new suite of rooms dedicated to photography

The Centre has been designed by David Kohn Architects (DKA). The intention is that it will:

• celebrate the original features of the V&A’s nineteenth-century picture galleries
• enable a rich variation of atmosphere through the use of lighting
• provide clever climate control to ensure a stable environment for fragile artworks. 
• include a modular system of display cases for greater flexibility and varied displays of a wide range of objects, from photographs to cameras, publications and archive materials, exploring the relationship between art and technology. 

It forms part of an ambitious two-phased FuturePlan development project to dramatically reimagine the display of the photographic collection at the V&A. In addition to developing the Photography Centre, the Museum has upgraded its storage facilities to better house its photography collection. An extensive project to catalogue and digitise the recently transferred Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection is also underway to provide web access and research resources for audiences around the world.

This is the

• existing Photography Page on the old V&A website. (The lack of search facilities on the new website is becoming increasingly irritating!)
• new Photography Page on the new V&A website - which to my mind is very much inferior to the old one! I do hope they sort out the website as well as the new Centre before the Autumn!

About Bernard Lee Schwartz (1914-1978)

Known as Bern, he took up photography late in life with great dedication and dynamism. A successful American businessman, at the age of sixty he began taking pictures and flourished as a portrait photographer, depicting well-known figures from across the globe. Bern and his wife Ronny were regular visitors to the UK and admirers of Britain’s museums and art galleries. In his short but prolific career, Bern photographed more than two hundred leading political, religious and cultural figures. His varied subjects included artists David Hockney and Henry Moore, dancers Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, and royals Prince Charles and Louis Mountbatten. Bern’s 1978 portrait of Sir Roy Strong, Director of the V&A from 1973 to 1987, has recently entered the Museum as a gift to The American Friends of the V&A through the generosity of The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation.

This is the website for Bern Schwartz's portrait photographs https://www.bernschwartz.org/

The Foundation has previous sponsored:

• the Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition at the V&A - see Review: Julia Margaret Cameron at the V&A in which you can clearly see Gallery 100 which is the subject of the visual above
• the Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery