That’s not all folks
NOT to be outdone, the Science Museum has unveiled plans to revamp its site at former RAF Wroughton in Wiltshire and the V&A has partnered with the Smithsonian Institution to open V&A East in 2023 at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London E20. This will include a new museum, plus a collection and research centre, housing 250,000 objects in a space designed by New York architects Diller Scofidio & Renfro.
‘By bringing together the world’s largest museum, research, and education complex and the world’s largest museum of art, design and performance, we believe we can unite the Arts and sciences to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our day,’ comments David Skorton, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. ‘Such a collaboration will create a new type of museum experience for east London and allow us to engage with new audiences in one of the most diverse and dynamic cities in the world.’
Highlights will include a 15th-century marquetry ceiling rescued from the now-destroyed Altamira Palace near Toledo, Spain, a 1930s plywood office by Frank Lloyd Wright and a 50ft-wide backdrop from the Ballets Russes 1926 production of Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
Meanwhile, the Science Museum’s new site at Swindon, also in development, using £40 million in Government funds, will allow the public to see thousands of items that have been hidden for decades, such as a 1947 aircraft the Rolling Stones used for a 1973 tour of Asia and Australia; the new building will be large enough to contain 600 doubledecker buses. ‘We refer to them because we do have actual doubledecker buses,’ explains the Science Museum Group’s managing director, Jonathan Newby. ‘Not 600, I don’t think, but we do have them, as well as tractors, printing presses, medical equipment, bicycles and every aspect of innovation and engineering developed over the past 200 years.’
He adds: ‘We are forever finding things that might not have been looked at for 50 or 60 years.’