London's Victoria and Albert Museum is to open a new photography gallery expected to be in 2012. The outgoing Director Mark Jones has comitted the museum to creating the new and enlarged space for photography in what is now a furniture study room on the first floor. The current gallery in room 38A on the ground floor opened in 2003.
The V&A with its long association with photography since the 1850s has been criticised for failing to allow its dynamic photography curators to deal with photography in an appropriate setting. A problem that has failed to go away since the closing of the Canon sponsored Photography Gallery and a series of well-received specialist shows in the museum's exhibition space.
The opening of the National Media Museum's London presence Media Space just over the road and the re-opening of the Photographers' Gallery in its new building, both due in 2012, threatened to further show up the V&A's poor physical space for showcasing photography from its permanent collection.
Watch this space for more information as it becomes available.
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