V&A unveils its new exhibit

Culture: £55m pays for extra entrance, courtyard, gallery – and pink loos

The Victoria And Albert Museum has unveiled its new £54.5million building project – complete with men’s pink loos.

Its additional entrance, courtyard and gallery space is the Victoria And Albert Museum’s largest architectural project in more than 100 years.

Both the men’s and women’s toilets at the world-famous London museum, which celebrates its 165th anniversary this summer, are painted pink.

Tristram Hunt, the V&A’s new director, proudly showed off the baby changing table in the men’s loos.

He said he had changed his mind over free entry to museums as he was not aware of the “economics”.

In an article in 2011, the then MP had suggested the UK Government should “begin to think about re-introducing charges for our national museums”.

“One week after I published that article, my neighbour now, Michael Dixon (director) of the Natural History Museum, wrote back and said the economics stack up for national museums, that the V&A has gone from 900,000 visitors when it charged to three million now, so not charging is good for us.

“The V&A, when it first opened, had a strong ethos about being open to the public so for three days a week it was open and four days a week it charged. The reason it became fully accessible was because of the suffragettes, because the way they managed fears about the suffragettes breaking things was to have as many people here as possible.”

Over £48million of the £54.5million project was raised from bodies such as the Monument Trust, Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation, Blavatnik Family Foundation, Garfield Weston Foundation, and Heritage Lottery Fund.

“Attracting donors is more of a challenge for us as a museum of decorative and applied arts than arguably in the contemporary arts scene,” said Mr Hunt.

The V&A’s new entrance, on Exhibition Road, leads to a courtyard paved in 100,000 handmade porcelain tiles inspired by the tradition of ceramics at the V&A.

New metal gates have been manufactured with a pattern of perforations tracing the imprint of the shrapnel damage from World War II on the stonework.

TILED: Dancers perform at the new V&A courtyard which is paved with 100,000 handmade porcelain tiles

Both men’s and women’s toilets are painted pink