Secrets of the Museum ' Series 3
Sign in to watch this content please.
- Episode
- Episode 1
- Broadcast Info
- 2022 (59 mins)
- Description
- Inside every museum is a hidden world, and now cameras are returning to the V&A, going behind the scenes to parts of the Victoria and Albert Museum never seen before. Only a small fraction of the museum’s enormous collection is on display. But in this series, we’ll go behind closed doors, discovering the painstaking work of the V&A’s experts as they breathe new life into fragile marvels, uncover hidden stories, and preserve the best of past and present. This year, the V&A is being transformed with new museums on the way, and more of its treasures than ever travelling to every part of the UK. In this series, we’ll find out how the V&A puts the biggest object it has ever acquired on display, hear the surprising tales of some of its Scottish collection, and unearth the human stories behind the objects in their blockbuster shows, from Beatrix Potter’s original drawings to priceless Fabergé eggs. We’ll see rare works by artists from Donatello to Constable, uncover the secrets of Tommy Cooper’s magic tricks, and meet the woman painted by renowned contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley. This week, curators are delving deeper than ever into the museum’s stores, in search of unusual objects to bring to light. We join curator Annemarie, as she prepares a major new exhibition on Beatrix Potter. The V&A holds the world’s largest collection of the author’s sketches, illustrations, and writings, and now Annemarie is hoping the exhibition will highlight Potter’s special relationship with the natural world. Beatrix Potter grew up in London, close to the South Kensington Museum, which was later renamed the Victoria and Albert. Potter was a regular visitor, and the museum helped to inspire some of her best’loved stories. It was here that she discovered an eighteenth’century men’s waistcoat, which a skilful tailor mouse is seen embroidering in her story The Tailor of Gloucester. Now the original waistcoat is coming out of storage at the museum to take its place in the new exhibition if conservator Nora can repair its frayed silk collar in time. Curator Simon has also been scouring the stores looking for special props and costumes from stage and screen to loan out to a new museum of showbusiness history, called Showtown, due to open in Blackpool in 2023. He’s found an original magic trick prop used many times by much’loved magician and comedian Tommy Cooper. The prop, a flowerpot containing fabric flowers that Cooper would coax into bloom except when the trick deliberately went wrong has been kept in the V&A’s stores since 1984, when it was acquired following Cooper’s death. The flowers are looking a little faded now and need careful cleaning by conservator Elizabeth Anne before they can be despatched to Blackpool. Simon also wants to invite Tommy Cooper’s old friend Jimmy Tarbuck in to the museum, to learn more about Cooper and the trick. Meanwhile curator Catherine is taking delivery of one of the museum’s newest acquisitions an 8ft tall painting by African American artist Kehinde Wiley. The painting is a portrait of a 35’year old woman from Dalston in east London, Melissa Thompson. Wiley has painted sitters from Spike Lee to Barack Obama, but his new work sees ordinary people captured in poses of power and majesty, in compositions that echo famous paintings by Old Masters. Catherine goes to meet Melissa at Ridley Road market in Dalston to learn what it was like to be painted by Wiley. And she invites Melissa in to the V&A to see her portrait go on display. The former headquarters of the Post Office Savings Bank in west London has long been home to many of the museum’s treasures whilst in storage. But now 250,000 of the V&A’s wonders must be carefully packed up, ready to be moved across the city to a new home, V&A East Storehouse, due to open to the public in 2024. And there are unexpected hazards around every corner ' assistant curator Ekta is on the point of packing up quivers of deadly poison arrows, acquired by the museum in 1880, and still lethal today. In South Kensington, Annemarie has unearthed a second rare Beatrix Potter item for the forthcoming exhibition. She’s found a pen’and’ink sketch by Potter of what appears to be a doorway in a hillside. Annemarie believes it to be the original drawing for the doorway into the home of hedgehog washer’woman Mrs Tiggywinkle. But is the sketch based on a real life location? Annemarie sets off for the Lake District, where Beatrix Potter and her family often holidayed. Accompanied by National Trust curator Helen, she tries to track down the exact spot where Beatrix Potter must have drawn Mrs Tiggywinkle’s front door. After two unpromising candidates are struck off the list, the pair think they may have an exclusive when they discover a third site which could be the original home of Mrs Tiggywinklee
- Genre
- History; Culture; Art & Design
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Secrets of the Museum ' Series 3". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/241859 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)