Key details
Time
- 10am – 4pm
Location
- External (UK)
-
Hochhauser Auditorium
V&A South Kensington
Cromwell Road
London, SW7 2RL
Price
- Free
Who could attend
- Everyone
Type
- Conference or symposium
The Victoria & Albert Museum and Royal College of Art celebrates 40 years of ground-breaking partnership in history of design with a conference exploring new directions in the discipline.
Two days of papers and discussion will explore how thinking about – and with – design and material culture responds to the issues that confront historical researchers today. Panel topics include decolonising, ecology, and public-facing history, combining design historians with fellow travellers in other disciplines and practices. These show how the energies of the art school and the museum foster collaborations that make histories of design relevant to new audiences while encouraging the critical and activist stance that has long characterised the field. Our two keynote speakers Jeremy Aynsley and Laura Osorio Sunnucks will share insights on where the discipline sits and how it needs to adapt in order to confront the challenges facing educational institutions and museums today.
40 years of joint postgraduate research in our V&A/RCA MA and PhD programmes in History of Design have embraced early modern, modern and contemporary studies, while pushing our chronologies, geographies and materials of study through Renaissance and Asian design, alongside pioneering pathways in theatre and performance, and the material culture of photography. With a deep-seated commitment to global and public-facing histories, our conference brings eminent alumni together with other current movers and shakers in the field to debate and discover where History of Design is going to go next and why.
