V&A Named Museum Of The Year

The Art Fund has announced that the V&A is 2016’s museum of the year.

The Duchess of Cambridge named the V&A winner at a ceremony in the Natural History Museum, prising the museum for its Alexander McQueen retrospective and re-opening of permanent galleries dedicated to the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries in particular.

Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said that the exhibitions of the museum were “at once entertaining and challenging, rooted in contemporary scholarship, and designed to reach and affect the lives of a large and diverse national audience.”

Fine Art and History of Art applicants should consider how the V&A has successfully intertwined different media and eras to put together their award-winning museum. The Alexander McQueen retrospective was the museum’s most visited show ever, with more than 493,043 visitors from 87 countries. Archaeology applicants should consider the cultural heritage of museums and how contemporary exhibitions such as this relate to more traditional museum collections.