https://www.change.org/p/the-victoria-albert-museum-display-the-collection-of-european-arms-and-armour

Quote:

The Victoria & Albert Museum owns one of the best collections of Renaissance and later European arms and armour in the UK, yet almost all of this collection has now been in storage for over a decade. The museum is large and has several possible spaces to display this important national collection. If the V&A is not willing or not able to display this important national collection then they should loan a significant portion of it to a museum that is willing and able to display it. Such an important collection should not be kept in storage any longer.

I agree absolutely with this petition. I have signed and urge everyone who reads this post to do the same. I have long thought it a scandal that the V&A's superb collection is almost entirely in store, no doubt for reasons of 'political correctness' - "nasty things like swords and firearms should be kept hidden from decent people in case they become corrupted".
Neil

Have you considered just asking if you can make an appointment to see the collection in the back room?

As with most things in life there is a trade-off here. It’s great to have as much as possible out for viewing by the public. The downside is that it becomes less accessible for research as many museums lack the funds and manpower to remove items from display. Hopefully they at least have a long-term plan to rotate the collection on and off of display.

I’ve seen some of the items in storage at the V&A and I was particularly captivated by the chain-hilted rapier: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O97533/rapier-unknown/

Harry Marinakis wrote:
Have you considered just asking if you can make an appointment to see the collection in the back room?

There is also the point that an appointment would be made to examine one item or a small related group. But I want to see the whole collection, or at least as much of it as possible - swords, armour and firearms. I cannot imagine the museum allowing me to be supervised by an attendant for several hours, not to mention the labour involved in getting hundreds of items down from shelves and cupboards!
Neil

It's usually in store for a reason.

Space, finances, provenance, etc etc. I struggle to think where anything else could go and if you insist that its all put out then the sculpture, painting, other metalwork,

The description of it having 'one of the best collections' seems a little over hyped. It has some very fine pecies as thats what its remit has always been, the best examples of stuff. But it doesn't compare to the Wallace or Leeds etc and most other collections.

Its also pretty well puplished and you can get things out through the usual channels. In fact its a lot easier to get a closer look of store items than anything on public display.

The thing is, we arent the target audience and what we're interested in,generally isn't what the general public is interested in either. We might obsess over the precise differences between say, a coat of plates, a brigandine, a corrazina and a jack of plates, then get into bitter blood feuds over precisely at which date one becomes the other, but to the average museum goer, its all just "armour".

There is also the simple fact that if you want to see a world class collection of arms and armour in London, there is already the Tower and the Wallace. Is the stuff in the V & A comparable to the collections in those two museums? On a scale to make it worth the time and effort attempting to compete with them, especially as the V & A has it's niche in largely unrelated areas?