{"product_id":"9781848226180","title":"Enriching the V\u0026A : A Collection of Collections (1862-1914) by Julius Bryant","description":"By 1862, just a  decade after its launch as a study collection for art and design, the Victoria and Albert Museum had become a reference resource for collectors, scholars and  art-market experts.? Enriching the  V\u0026amp;A, the final volume in a trilogy of books on the museum's 19th-century  history, describes how the young museum's rapid growth in the following  decades was driven more by collectors, agents and dealers, through loans,  gifts and bequests, than by the combined expertise, acquisitions policies and  buying power of its directors and curators.   The V\u0026amp;A soon became a collection of  collections, embodying a new age of collecting that benefitted from the  break-up of historic institutions and ancestral collections across Europe, and imperial expeditions in Asia and Africa. The industrial  revolution had created a new social class with the resources to buy from the  expanding art market, especially in the decorative arts. Many were touched by  a new moral imperative to collect for the home, however humble, and to share  their specialist knowledge and enthusiasm by lending to the new public  museums.   Enriching the V\u0026amp;A explores the  formative influence on the museum, and on pioneering fields of scholarship,  of the V\u0026amp;A's leading Victorian and Edwardian benefactors. It also shares  uncomfortable truths about the sources of some objects from the age of  empires and shows how the meanings of things can change through the  transformation of private property into public museum collections.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308311654773,"sku":"9781848226180","price":39.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781848226180.jpg?v=1762807097","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781848226180","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}