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The word maharaja, literally ‘great king’, conjures up a vision of splendour and magnificence. The image of a turbaned, bejewelled ruler with absolute authority and immense wealth is pervasive and evocative, but it fails to do justice to his role in the cultural and political history of India. Maharaja: the splendour of India’s royal courts re-examines the world of the maharajas and their extraordinarily rich culture.

The exhibition spans the period from the beginning of the 18th century to the mid-20th century, bringing together over 250 magnificent objects, many being lent from India’s royal collections for the first time. It examines the changing role of the maharajas within a social and historical context and reveals how their patronage of the arts, both in India and Europe, resulted in splendid and beautiful objects symbolic of royal status, power and identity.

Digitally growing plants and a mechanical eye that mirrors the blink of a visitor's gaze will be among the digital works that will feature in Decode: Digital Design Sensations. The exhibition will show the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small screen based graphics to large-scale installations. Curated in collaboration with leading digital arts organisation onedotzero, there will be works by established international artists and designers including Daniel Brown, Golan Levin and Daniel Rozin as well as emerging designers such as Troika and Simon Heijdens.

The exhibition will be centred in the Porter Gallery with a series of interventions throughout the Museum and garden as well as a number of specially commissioned one-off performances. For the first time, the V&A is also commissioning a digital work for its website and will provide remote access to some of the works on display.

The exhibition will explore three themes. Code as a Raw Material will present pieces that use computer code to create new designs in the same way a sculptor works with materials such as clay or wood. This section will look at how code can be programmed to create constantly fluid and ever changing objects. On display will be a new piece by Daniel Brown from his On Growth and Form series, inspired by the V&A's collection. Brown uses advanced mathematics to generate organic depictions of imaginary plants that continuously grow, producing new buds, blossoms and stalks. As soft, organic digital images, these generative flowers will continue to develop and grow over the course of the exhibition.

The second theme, Interactivity, will look at designs where the viewer directly influences the work. Visitors will be invited to interact with and contribute to the development of the works, many of which show designers playing with the boundaries of design and performance. One object will be Golan Levin's Opto-Isolator, a human-sized mechanical eye which follows the gaze of the viewer, blinking one second after its visitor blinks. Weave Mirror by Daniel Rozin is a responsive sculpture that recreates an image of the viewer on its 768 motorized planes. A smoky portrait comes into focus as the planes rotate into place.

The final theme, The Network, will focus on works that comment on and utilise the digital traces left behind by everyday communications, from blogs in social media communities to mobile communications or satellite tracked GPS systems. This section explores how advanced technologies and the internet have enabled new types of social interaction and media for self expression. Designers reinterpret this information to create works that translate data into striking forms. These range from live, real-time visualisations of flight patterns by Aaron Koblin to a data mining project by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kemvar. Their project We Feel Fine extracts comments by bloggers from all over the world on how they are feeling and represents the information as colourful, floating spheres. Users can filter the information by selecting an emotion as well as bloggers' gender, age and the city and weather conditions where he or she is based to reveal anonymous, often highly personal, statements about modern life today.

The V&A will present its first ever exhibition of British quilts, with examples dating from 1700 to the present day - a unique opportunity to view the V&A's unseen quilt collection as well as key national loans. Earliest examples include a sumptuous silk and velvet bedcover, with an oral narrative that links it to King Charles II's visit to an Exeter manor house in the late 17th century. Recent examples will include works by leading artists such as Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin and commissions for the exhibition by a number of contemporary artists including Sue Stockwell and Caren Garfen.
The curators have unravelled some of the complex personal narratives and broader historical events documented in the quilts. Examples by both named and unnamed makers will be shown with objects relating to their subject matter and makers including paintings and prints, as well as needlework tools and personal keepsakes. One example is a cot quilt made at Deal castle, displayed for the first time alongside the maker's diary and portraits of the two grandchildren who slept under it. There will also be bedcovers that commemorate the lives of prominent figures including Admiral Lord Nelson, Charles II and the Duke of Wellington and important events such as the coronation of Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington's battle at Vittoria. The exhibition will end with Tracey Emin's To Meet My Past (2002), a confessional installation which follows the tradition of quilts used as vessels for personal and collective memories.

The exhibition will be presented chronologically and thematically. The contemporary works will be woven throughout following the themes:

The Domestic Landscape; Private Thoughts, Public Debates; British
Eccentricity; Making a Living and Memory and Memorial. Together the
quilts document love, marriage, births, deaths, periods of intense
patriotic fervour, regional and national identity and developments
in taste and fashion.

Alongside the V&A's quilts will be loans from museums around the country including Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and the Glasgow Museums. On loan for the very first time from the National Gallery of Australia will be the Rajah quilt, made in 1841 by women convicts aboard the HMS Rajah as they were being transported to Van Diemen's Land (present day Tasmania). The women used sewing provisions donated by Elizabeth Fry's social reform initiative to create what is now the only transportation quilt in a national collection, never before shown outside Australia. The exhibition will celebrate the astonishing vision involved in the design and making of each quilt.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the opening times for the exhibition?

10.00 to 17.45 daily (last ticket sold 16:45, last entry 17.00)
10.00 to 22.00 Fridays (last ticket sold 20.45, last entry 21.00)


Will photography (including for personal use) be permitted?

We are not able to allow photography in the temporary exhibitions due to copyright restrictions. The V&A is creating a special Quilts microsite with full details and images of each quilt in the exhibition. There will also be a fully illustrated catalogue in the main exhibition publication.

How much notice is required for a visit?

None, the museum is free to enter and you can buy your exhibition ticket upon arrival. However, we strongly recommend you book in advance online  or by calling 0844 209 1770 (booking fee applies).

How early can I see the exhibition?

The exhibition will be open daily to the public from 20 March 2010 until 4 July 2010. There will be a preview day on 19 March 2010 for V&A Members. Find out how to become a V&A member here .

How many quilts will be in the exhibition?

The exhibition will show 65 beautifully crafted quilts, predominantly
from the V&A's own collection but also including a number of important
loans and new works by contemporary artists, many of which have been
commissioned especially for the show.

Which museums have loaned quilts for the exhibition?

We have secured a number of loans from regional UK museums
including Geffrye Museum, Imperial War Museum, Upton House,
Rougemont House, Forge Mill Needle Museum, Glasgow Museums,
St Fagan's: National History Museum, Beamish Museum, Ulster Folk
& Transport Museum; as well as an international loan from the National Gallery of Australia and several loans from private collections.

How will you present the quilts?

The exhibition is arranged in five sections, each of which has its own distinct feel evoking the context and stories associated with the quilts. The five sections are underpinned by a loose chronology. Contemporary pieces will be embedded within the five sections in an organic way, inviting links between historic examples and the work of artists practicing today.

The exhibition will take a contemporary and innovative approach to the
design of the space. Many of the quilts will be wall-mounted, but in
some instances, bed-sized mounts will be used to showcase the
complex and highly creative designs, enabling visitors to appreciate
these objects as they were intended to be seen.

How much information on each quilt will be available?

There will be an introduction and timeline at the start of the exhibition
with section headings to outline the key periods and themes. All objects will have a short description and information detailing materials, maker (where known), date and context. In addition, there will be extended caption information for a number of highlight objects exploring their unique narrative.

This information will also be available online, and in greater detail in
the exhibition book. For those particularly interested in materials and
techniques there will be a handheld multimedia guide available for a
small cost, enabling visitors to study the quilts in depth using audio,
video and close up images.

When will the exhibition book be available? What is in it?

Quilts 1700-2010 - Hidden Histories, Untold Stories will be published
in March 2010 to coincide with the exhibition. Costing £35, the
comprehensive book is 240 pages. It includes essays by leading
historians and is illustrated with new photography documenting each
of the objects in the exhibition. The book editor and curator of the
exhibition is Sue Prichard, curator of contemporary textiles at the V&A.

The V&A will also be publishing Patchwork for Beginners in March,
also edited by Sue Prichard, an introductory guide to creating
patchwork from inspiration to finished product. A section on the basic tools and techniques is followed by five simple projects. Each chapter is beautifully photographed with technical illustrations and templates.
The 64-page publication will cost £7.99.

What other merchandise will you have available?

The V&A Shop, in conjunction with Liberty Art Fabrics, will be producing a limited edition range of fabrics featuring designs from quilts in the exhibition. You can receive further information by emailing
customerservice@vandashop.co.uk with 'V&A Quilting Fabric' in the
subject line.  More details on further merchandise will be confirmed in spring 2010.

When are details on the symposium being announced?

A two-day conference will be held on 11 and 12 June 2010. See the call for papers to find out more about speaking at the conference. The emphasis will be on interdisciplinary, unpublished research. A conference programme will be published in March 2010. There will also be a full programme of events, including practice-led workshops and talks.

This is the first major exhibition on Horace Walpole, the most important English collector of the eighteenth century, and will bring together many of his most remarkable objects. Walpole was the first to systematically assemble the visual evidence of English history, and the first to recognise the importance of the portrait miniature to the history of British art. This exhibition recreates Walpole's pioneering collection in the context of the rooms at Strawberry Hill, where visitors experienced a journey through ancient and modern British history and European art.

 

Admission charge applies.

This major retrospective will examine the origins, development and long term influence of the Ballets Russes, to celebrate the centenary of their first appearance in 1909.

Diaghilev’s extraordinary company, which survived a twenty-year rollercoaster of phenomenal successes and crippling problems, revolutionised ballet. As importantly, Diaghilev’s use of avant-garde composers, such as Stravinsky and designers such as Bakst, Goncharova, Picasso and Matisse, made a major contribution to the introduction of Modernism.

Museum staff are currently researching the exhibition and would be interested to hear from any individuals who have relevant private material. In particular, a large number of original costumes were dispersed at the Sotheby’s auctions in the early 1970s. So if you have an original costume still hanging in your wardrobe, we would be delighted to hear from you. In the first instance please contact Jane Pritchard, Curator of Dance at j.pritchard@vam.ac.uk 

By casting shadows on light sensitive paper or chemically manipulating its surface these artists seemingly capture the presence of objects, figures or glowing light. The results are exciting images often with surreal or abstract effects and symbolic content. These camera-less techniques were explored at the dawn of photography and have now been rediscovered by contemporary image makers. On display will be unique and beautifully crafted works by Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Adam Fuss, Garry Fabian Miller and Floris Neusüss.