At a time when museums world over are believed to be battling low footfalls, Nicholas Coleridge says, we need them more than ever. Coleridge, who was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2009, will be in India as one of the speakers at the two-day International Symposium on Creativity and Freedom presented by CIMA Gallery, Ashoka University and India International Centre, Delhi, on February 5 and 6.
Amidst writing his memoirs, The Glossy Years, to be published by Penguin, his engagement with V&A and his job as chairman, Conde Nast Britain , Coleridge in an email interview talks about repatriation of artefacts, the new entrance at V&A and upcoming exhibitions.
Compared to 2015-16, the number of footfalls in 2017-18 at Victoria and Albert Museum increased by 26%. What do you attribute the increase to?
Yes, V&A had a very strong year last year in visitor numbers — the best ever in our 160-year history. The Pink Floyd exhibition was a huge hit, with queues around the block. V&A has had a succession of hit shows in recent years — David Bowie, Alexander McQueen, Disobedient Objects, The Fabric of India... they have all helped build an audience. But the museum also stages smaller academic shows of scholarship; there is an excellent one on Persian art coming soon.
The new Sackler courtyard, Blavatnik entrance hall and underground Sainsbury Gallery have made a huge difference. It has enabled visitors to enter from a new, second entry on Exhibition Road, and it is less forbidding. In the summer, a lot of students sunbathe in the courtyard too.
The new Exhibition Road Quarter (as it is called) was designed by architect Amanda Levete and cost £54 million. It has been transformative for the museum. What I love and admire about it, is the way it has fitted so naturally into the existing buildings. It isn’t jarring. It has modernised V&A without spoiling its character.
The Duchess of Cambridge was apparently stunned by the new courtyard and entrance. Give us an insight into the latest architectural addition.
The Duchess of Cambridge, our royal patron, thought it was spectacular. She is rather an expert on photography, and when she opened the new V&A photography galleries, she proved very knowledgeable.
The Exhibition Road Quarter was 10 years in the planning, and took six years to build. It is an extraordinary feat of engineering, an intervention we would never have dared to do in the past. It involved digging between two Grade One historic buildings. It has provided us with a vast new exhibition space.
The Louvre in Paris also witnessed the number of visitors go up by 25% last year. That has been partly attributed to Beyonce and Jay-Z’s ‘Apes**t’ song’s video shot inside the Louvre, featuring seminal works of art. What do you make of it?
I am in favour of museums taking risks to draw attention to themselves, and to bring new audiences, providing it doesn’t damage the treasures or art works. There is nothing sadder than an empty museum. After all, the treasures belong to the nation — to everybody.
A successful museum should be filled with scholars, students, tourists, locals, everybody. Once a month, V&A holds a Friday Late, when we stay open until 10 pm with music, drinks, a carnival atmosphere. It is very popular with the young and becomes quite a pickup event for the cultured young.
I have a theory about museums. These days, citizens live in smaller spaces, because property is so expensive. Museums provide spaces to meet, with huge galleries and a chance to see things in a different way, in real life, not digitally. They can be meeting places with cafés and restaurants, as well as lecture halls and stimulating exhibitions.
Museums can be very modern in that respect. They are more necessary than ever.
In the last couple of years, the demand for repatriation of artefacts has become stronger. France, in fact, has said that it wants to return artefacts to their countries of origin. What do you think?
The British national museums are not allowed, by British law, to sell or give away our treasures, other than the return of any pieces which turn out to be the spoils of Nazi theft. We loaned to more than 200 museums last year, in Britain and around the world. We also loan long-term. We have offered to loan many of our Ethiopian pieces to Ethiopia, for example, providing we can be sure they will be well cared for.
What are the highlights of 2019 at V&A?
There is a major show on food coming up. An exhibition about Dior, the fashion house, opens in a few days. The advance ticket sales are huge. We have been adding extra dates and late night views. I suspect more than half a million people will come.
Then there is an important exhibition about cars, the photographer Tim Walker and about Mary Quant, the 60s fashion designer.
It is an incredibly exciting time for V&A. We opened a museum in China in 2017 — in Shekou, and an important museum in Dundee, Scotland in September last year. It is designed by the architect Kengo Kuma. And we are building two new museums in East London.
V&A has a new director, Dr Tristram Hunt, who joined nearly two years ago. He is excellent and adding to the sense of excitement currently surrounding the museum.
