January 2005
CHINESE NEW YEAR 2005 AT THE V&A
12 - 13 FEBRUARY 2005, 11.00 - 17.00

To welcome the Year of the Rooster the V&A will celebrate Chinese New Year with a weekend of events on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th February.

Adults and children can listen to Chinese music and watch a traditional Lion Dance in the Grand Entrance. They can also take part in a range of demonstrations including jade carving, noodle making, Chinese calligraphy, tea tasting and Chinese Opera face painting.

Other performances will include Beijing Ballet in traditional folk costumes, Shaolin Temple Kung Fu and the Chinese Yaogu Dance Troupe. The Taiwan Puppet group will also be showing the famous children's story "The Wedding of the Mice".

Entry and all events are free of charge.

Notes to editors:
- Admission to the V&A is FREE
- Admission to Chinese New Year is FREE
- For a full schedule of events please go to www.vam.ac.uk .
- For all public enquiries telephone 020 7942 2000 or look at the Museum web site: www.vam.ac.uk.
- High resolution images are available to download from www.image.net .
Please look under Arts, V&A and then Chinese New Year or call direct on 020 7841 0550.
- For further press information please contact: Anna Larkin on 020 7942
2502 or email: a.larkin@vam.ac.uk .

Beatrix Potter’s Garden
22 January – 8 May at V&A Museum of Childhood
Admission free

Peter Pan: 100 Years and Still Flying
Until 31 January at V&A Theatre Museum
Admission free

WHAT'S ON AT THE V&A IN
MARCH 2005

***NEW***
INTERNATIONAL ARTS & CRAFTS
17 MARCH - 24 JULY 2005
Sponsored by Heal's

The V&A's major spring exhibition, International Arts and Crafts, will be the most comprehensive ever UK exhibition on the movement and the first to look at it from a truly international perspective. It will show how Arts and Crafts originated in Britain in the 1880s and became the first British design movement to have widespread influence internationally as the ideas spread to America, Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan.

On display will be more than 300 of the best Arts and Crafts objects from simple folk craft to sophisticated objects made for wealthy patrons. Among the highlights will be four specially created room sets emphasising the importance of the Arts and Crafts home and interior. There will be two British sets (one urban and one rural), one American 'Craftsman' room and one Japanese 'model room' dating from 1928, recreated through recently rediscovered objects.

Arts & Crafts objects on display include textiles, stained glass, furniture, ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, books, architecture, photography, paintings and sculpture, by influential designers such as Voysey, Mackintosh, Ashbee, Morris, Baillie Scott and De Morgan.

Arts and Crafts was both a movement and a style, a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and its machine dominated production. Led by John Ruskin and William Morris, the movement promoted the ideals of craftsmanship, individualism, and the integration of art into every day life. The movement challenged the hierarchy of the arts to raise the status of craftsmen. It also advocated social reform through improved workshop conditions, a return to workshop production and a simpler way of life.

International Arts and Crafts follows the V&A's highly successful "style" exhibitions on William Morris in 1996, Art Nouveau in 2000 and Art Deco in 2003. The V&A's Modernism exhibition will open in Spring 2006.

Admission £10 concessions available. To book call 0870 906 3883 or visit www.vam.ac.uk

STYLE AND SPLENDOUR
QUEEN MAUD OF NORWAY'S WARDROBE 1896-1938 FASHION GALLERY, 40
2 FEBRUARY - 8 JANUARY 2006
In February 2005 the V&A opened a display of the spectacular wardrobe of Queen Maud, the British Princess who became Queen Consort of the newly independent Norway in 1905. Daughter of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, Maud was renowned for her fashionable style. Her clothes document an extraordinary era of fashion history, from the decorative but elaborate dress of the Victorian era to the streamlined chic of the 1930s. Her wardrobe comprised royal robes, sporting wear and accessories. This display includes some 50 outfits ranging from her wedding trousseau of 1896 to the latest Worth designs purchased just months before her death in 1938.
Style and Splendour coincides with the centennial celebrations of Norway's emergence as an independent nation in 1905, following the peaceful dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden.
Entrance is FREE

SPECTRES: WHEN FASHION TURNS BACK
CONTEMPORARY SPACE
24 FEBRUARY - 8 MAY 2005
Fashion has always had a love affair with history, and the V&A's new fashion exhibition 'Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back' looks at the powerful influence of the past on the present. It explores how fashion designers from Christian Dior to Hussein Chalayan are 'haunted' by historical references and inspired by past ideas.
'Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back' shows how designers are repeatedly inspired by a range of historical muses - the circus performer, the harlequin, the Greek goddess, the bohemian. It looks at how details, such as pleats, bows and lace, are constantly re-interpreted by fashion designers in new and inspiring ways.
The exhibition provides an outstanding opportunity to see beautiful historic costumes by Christian Dior, Elsa Schiaperelli, Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin. Among the diverse range of contemporary designers featured are many at the foreground of conceptual fashion, including Viktor & Rolf, Comme des Garçons, Jean Paul Gaultier and Yohji Yamamoto. Belgian designers, including Dries Van Noten and Veronique Branquinho, are highlighted.
Entrance is FREE

***LAST CHANCE TO SEE***
JOINEDUPDESIGNFORSCHOOLS
21 FEBRUARY - 10 MARCH 2005
This exhibition presents the results of The Sorrell Foundation's three year project involving 1000 school children and 50 of Britain's leading architecture and design companies. Paul Smith, Thomas Heatherwick, Conran Design, Wolf Olins, Kevin McCloud and many others have proposed brilliant design solutions to resolve issues such as contemporary clothing, positive use of colour and social spaces in schools. The design briefs came from the children themselves. Case studies and examples are on display.
Entrance is FREE .

NEW GALLERIES
NEW PORTRAIT MINIATURES GALLERY
OPENING 2 MARCH 2005

The V&A will open a new Portrait Miniatures Gallery on 2 March 2005 displaying masterpieces by Hans Holbein, the Elizabethans Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, Samuel Cooper - who painted both Cromwell and Charles II - and Richard Cosway, miniature painter to the Prince Regent.

The new gallery will display 140 portraits from the national collection of British miniatures which is held at the V&A. Together they will bring to life this unique art form, tracing the development from its origins in the illuminated manuscript. It will look at how in Britain portrait miniatures began in the court of Henry VIII, flourished under Charles I and during the Restoration, and had their heyday in the 19th century before the rise of photography.

NEW PRINTS & DRAWINGS GALLERY
OPENING 2 MARCH 2005
The inaugural display in the new Prints and Drawings Gallery will be The Spirit of Place: Landscape in British Printmaking, until 30 November 2005. The depiction of the landscape in printmaking has burgeoned over the last hundred years as this display shows with prints by Paul Nash, Frederick Griggs and Graham Sutherland to contemporary prints by Lucian Freud, Julian Opie and Anya Gallaccio.

The Prints and Drawings Gallery was made possible by a generous gift from Julie and Robert Breckman. The Gallery includes recent acquisitions made with the support of the Julie and Robert Breckman Print Fund and shown here for the first time.

NEW ARCHITECTURE GALLERY
The V&A and RIBA opened a new Architecture Gallery at the V&A in November 2004, the UK's first permanent architecture gallery. The gallery features highlights from their world-class collections of drawings, models, photographs and architectural fragments as well as important loans. The gallery has been designed as an introduction to architecture for students and the general visitor and displays 180 exhibits from across the ages featuring some of the world's most famous architects and buildings. Highlights include a capital from the Pantheon, drawings by Palladio, Vanburgh, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe and a computer fly-through of Zaha Hadid's Phaeno Science Centre in Germany, due for completion in 2005.

NEW CONTEMPORARY GLASS GALLERY
The V&A opened a new gallery for contemporary glass, The Märit Rausing Gallery, on 8 December 2004. The new gallery adjoins the V&A's historic Glass Gallery and provides dedicated space specifically for international contemporary work from the Museum's permanent collection.
The first display includes over 60 works by leading contemporary glass artists including Dale Chihuly, Tessa Clegg, Deborah Cocks, Bert Frijns, Gillies-Jones, Mieke Groot, Laura Heyworth, Angela Jarman, Antoine Leperlier, Dante Marioni, Richard Marquis, Richard Mietner, William Morris, Klaus Moje, Stepan Pala, Zora Palova, Kirstie Rea, Colin Reid, Judith Schaechter, Per B Sundberg, Lino Tagliapietra, Emma Woffenden and Toots Zynsky.
The V&A's glass collections are truly international and include many fine examples of recent glass from Europe and Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

DISPLAYS
INSIDE OUT: BRITISH ARCHITECTURE AND GARDEN DESIGN SINCE THE RENAISSANCE
ARCHITECTURE GALLERY
2 MARCH - 5 JUNE 2005
Since the Renaissance, architects have been concerned with the way that buildings fit into the landscape or impose themselves upon it. Concentrating on Britain, where gardening has become a national obsession, this exhibition examines the planned relationship between house and garden and how the two work together. Drawing on both the RIBA and V&A collections, the exhibits range in date from Robert Smythson's early 17th century records of Jacobean prodigy houses and their gardens, to designs by contemporary architects particularly interested in the integration of houses and gardens. Inside Out is the second in a series of changing displays in the new Architecture Gallery .

'CORNERS OF PARADISE': WILLIAM BLAKE, SAMUEL PALMER AND 'THE ANCIENTS'
PAINTINGS, ROOM 88A
MARCH - SEPTEMBER 2005
Marking the bi-centenary of the birth of Samuel Palmer, this display shows prints, drawings and watercolours by him, Edward Calvert and other members of 'the Ancients', the circle of young artistic disciples of William Blake.

EVENTS
SPECTACLE STYLE LOUNGE
THEATRE MUSEUM
16 MARCH 2005, 19.00-21.30
Style Lounge hosts a spectacular evening at the Theatre Museum, exploring the nature of 'spectacle' in the contexts of theatre, performance, fashion and film. Featuring live performances, projections, music debate and bar.
Tickets £6.

FRIDAY LATE VIEW
ILLUSTRATE!
25 MARCH 2005, 18.30-22.00
An evening dedicated to the renaissance of illustration, celebrating the versatility of today's most influential practitioners. Visitors can take part in drawing workshops with some of the best contemporary illustrators and designers working in fashion, music, advertising and film.

WEDNESDAY LATE VIEW
BEAUTY AND ARCHITECTURE
LECTURE THEATRE
23 MARCH, 19.15-20.05
The notion of beauty has been unfashionable since the 19th century. Philosopher Alain de Botton considers why beauty disappeared as an architectural concept and tries to see ways in which it can be re-integrated into contemporary practice. A book signing will follow.
Tickets £8.50. Concessions available.

ACTIVITY BACK-PACKS
EVERY SATURDAY 10.30-17.00
Children can hoist a Back-Pack on their shoulders and embark upon an adventure across the Museum. Back-Pack tours are full of exciting hands-on activities related to the collections. There are eight Back-Packs to choose from: Chinese Treasures, Metal Detector, The Explorer, The Antique Detective, Magic Glasses, Fancy Furnishings, Murder Mystery and The Emperor's Party.
Activities can last 30-45 minutes. For children aged 5-12 years.

THE ACTIVITY CART
EVERY SUNDAY 10.30 -17.00
Explore the Museum's collections through drawing and making activities. The Activity Cart is sited in a different gallery each weekend. Loaded with a huge variety of activities ranging from making mosaics in the Sculpture Gallery to designing a kimono in the Japanese Gallery. Activities are suitable for children aged 3 to 12 years. All children must be accompanied by an adult.

GENERAL INFORMATION
FREE ADMISSION FOR ALL
The V&A is open daily 10am - 5.45pm and until 10pm on Wednesdays and the last Friday of the month. The nearest underground station is South Kensington (Piccadilly, District and Circle lines). For general information call 020 7942 2000. Website: http://www.vam.ac.uk

OTHER V&A MUSEUMS

MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD AT BETHNAL GREEN
BEATRIX POTTER'S GARDEN
TO 5 MAY 2005
The inspiration for many of Beatrix Potter's well loved characters came from her garden. Visitors can take a virtual walk through the Lake District and see some of Potter's original artwork.

THEATRE MUSEUM AT COVENT GARDEN
PHOTOGRAPHS OF ACTORS BY SIMON ANNAND
THE DRESSING ROOM
9 FEBRUARY - 1 MAY 2005
Photographer Simon Annand has been given rare access to dressing rooms around the West End where he has photographed many leading actors over the past 20 years.
The photographs were taken during The 'Half' , the half hour before curtain up when all actors have to be in the theatre.
The exhibition will include unpublished photographs of Joss Ackland, Gillian Anderson, Francesa Annis, Rowan Atkinson, Jane Asher, Cate Blanchett, Kenneth Branagh, Glenn Close, Daniel Craig, Niamh Cusack, Sinead Cusack, Daniel Day-Lewis, Frances de la Tour, Judi Dench, Joseph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Dawn French, Stephen Fry, Sir Michael Gambon, Anthony Hopkins, Jane Horrocks, Glenda Jackson, Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Spike Milligan, Eric Porter, Alan Rickman, Tim Roth, Greta Scaachi, Martin Sheen and Imogen Stubbs.