Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Museum is located in the Brompton district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in an area that has become known as "Albertopolis" because of its association with Prince Albert, The Albert Memorial, and the major cultural institutions with which he was associated. These include the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Royal Albert Hall. The Museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the department for culture, media, and sports. Like other national British Museums, entrance has been free since 2001.

One of the most fascinating collections is the Theatre and Performance Collections. The collections were founded in the 1920s when a private collector, Gabrielle Enthoven, donated her extensive collection of theatre designs, memorabilia, books, and photographs to the Museum. She continued to add to her collection and worked on it as a museum volunteer until her death in 1950. Since that period, the collection has continued to grow and has provided a home for many other significant objects and archives.

The Victoria and Albert Museum covers nearly thirteen acres and 145 galleries. Its collection spans 5000 years of art, from ancient times to the present day, from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia, and North Africa. The holdings of ceramic, glass, textiles, costumes, silver, ironwork, jewellery, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints, and printmaking, drawings, and photographs are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world. The museum owns the world's largest collection of post-classical sculpture, with the holdings of Italian Renaissance items being the largest outside Italy. The departments of Asia include art from South Asia, China, Japan, Korea, and the Islamic world. The East Asian collections are among the best in Europe, with particular strengths in ceramics and metalwork, while the Islamic collection is amongst the largest in the Western world. Overall, it is one of the largest museums in the world.