This seminar will offer a talk about – and in the guise of – the South Kensington Museum, which was the original home of what was later split into the V&A Museum and the Science Museum. It was created by the government's Department of Science and Art, which was run by Henry Cole, the South Kensington Museum's founding director and the prime mover behind the Great Exhibition of 1851. The seminar will have a particular resonance for photographic historian because of the different ways that photography has been considered by the two institutions over their history.
By considering the prehistory of the Department and Museum, we intend to put the Victorian relationship between science and art into both long and local perspectives. We will cover the period of roughly 50 years during which the two collections lived in a single organisation, the reasons why they were split circa 1900, and the present-day opportunities in museums and universities for reconnecting them.
The Department of Science and Art Revisited: The View from South Kensington
Tuesday 18 October 2016, 13.00–14.00, Science Museum Lecture Theatre
Dr Tim Boon, Head of Research and Public History at the Science Museum Professor Bill Sherman, Director of Research and Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Full programme details can be found on the Science Museum webpages:http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about-us/collections-and-research/news-and-events/autumn-research-seminars
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