V&A Museum closes amid coronavirus pandemic

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Mar 18, 2020

London’s Victoria & Albert Museum has announced that it’s temporarily closing to the public from Wednesday 18 March in a bid to protect the health and wellbeing of its staff and visitors.

Various exhibitions were on show at the design and fashion museum, including ‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’ which explores the role of the kimono as a dynamic and constantly evolving icon of fashion, and ‘Tim Walker: Wonderful Things’, a photography exhibition showcasing exclusive works from the renowned British fashion photographer.

The National Gallery, Tate Modern and Tate Britain, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Natural History Museum have also closed their doors to contain the spread of coronavirus in London.

The city had 480 confirmed cases on 16 March, and many more are expected over the coming weeks.

Other V&A sites, including the famous gallery in South Kensington, the Museum of Childhood, Blythe House and the V&A Dundee, have now closed.

The South Kensington gallery is known for hosting several highly successful fashion exhibitions, including a Mary Quant retrospective that closed last month. It was the museum’s third most popular fashion show ever, after ‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ and ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’.