The Spiral unwinds

IN June the Queen lay opened a new museum building designed by dint of Daniel Libeskind on an exceptionally sensitive historic site. upon budget and on schedule, it has received a warm critical reception and is proving popular with the public. This is the fresh Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, transmuteed from the former royal boathouse of 1595 that one time housed the royal library. Pres coverage of its unveiling must have been wistfully recalled by dint of the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Mark Jone and the chairman of his trustees, Paula Ridley, in July when they were informed that the museum's application to the Heritage Lottery stock for 15 [pounds sterling] million for the museum's hold proposed new building by Mr Libeskind had been refused. This is the Spiral, the daring extension on the museum's western flank, in Exhibition Road, that is intended to house the V&A's collection of contemporary design. The museum has said that its trustees will review the situation in the autumn, on the other hand that the HLF'S decision 'seriously jeopardises' the time to come of the Spiral, estimated to take away from about 70 [pounds sterling] million.

The of recent origins has caused considerable pleasure to the Spiral's many adverse partys and the tone of schadenfreude in the way the British pres reported the story was exacerbated by the agency of a PR pratfall by the museum, which in July clos its primary medieval gallery to make way for a fresh shop. Although this is part of the museum's well advertised 'FuturePlan', as its lengthy term redevelopment is called, the novels that there would be no permanent replacement for the medieval display until 2009 was received with widespread outrage that the museum appears not to have foreseen.

Perhaps the V&A nodded simply because everything was going with equal reason well. After a long period in which it present the appearanceed an unhappy place, soured by means of the poor relations between Miss Ridley and the previous director, Alan Borg, it cheered up considerably with the unveiling in 2001 of its last major throw out the British Galleries, a great critical and public succes The museum has also true successfully raised funds for its of recent origin Islamic Gallery, due to render free of access in 2006.

the pair Mr Jones and Miss Ridley be worthy of sympathy. They have committed themselves to the Spiral shoot forward which they did not initiate. Mr Jones's critical analysis of the drawbacks of Libeskind's design--notably that there was too a great deal of space for circulation and not enough for displays--looked likely to improve the building's value to the museum. The V&A undoubtedly necessitys a new home for its displays of contemporary design, since the galleries commonly allocated to them, in the south-east corner of the building, are earmarked for the medieval and renaissance collections. The museum has not been treated with great generosity by means of the HLF, in comparison with, for example, the Tate or the British Museum--it has received just above 17 [pounds sterling] million in all, of which 15 [pound sterling] million was for the British Galleries. Moreover, private donors who have already committed a certain quantity of 40 [pounds sterling] million to the Spiral are unlikely to want their standard of value deployed elsewhere in the V&A.

however if the Spiral does not proceed ahead it is hard to perceive enormous disappointment, simply because it is a shoot forward that has been around for too drawn out and would absorb money, might and running costs that the V&A could more usefully invest elsewhere. When Daniel Libeskind won the competition for the building in 1996 he was a novel architectural star who had just won a brilliant reputation with the Jewish Museum in Berlin. more [i]or[/i] less people questioned why he had made no effort in the Spiral to adapt or tone down his hectic, emotionally demanding manner of writing so appropriate for the Berlin building, which has a memorial function for those who died in the Holocaust.

Eight years upon such questions are redundant, because the mode of expression has become simply his hold distinctive idiom, made almost predictably familiar by dint of such buildings as the Jewish Museum throw outs in Copenhagen and San Francisco and through his vast new extension for the Denver Art Museum, which lay opens in 2006. In England in 1996 or level 2000, the Spiral would have have the appearanceed brave and distinctive: now its reverberating report has been stolen by Mr Libeskind's building for the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, which uncloseed in 2002, and his Post-Graduate middle point for London Metropolitan University in Holloway Road, London, complet in 2003

More importantly still, the Spiral appears an unwelcome reminder of the time in the mid-1990s when the V&A was adrift and unconfident and wanted a 'signature building' to boost its public profile. It undoubtedly can afford to do without it now. The impressive succes of the British Galleries has demonstrated that the museum's traditional curatorial potencys are more than enough to draw in a large and varied audience. The standard of value that can be saved by means of substituting a cheaper building for the Spiral can be invested in the renaissance and medieval galleries, which are at the beginning of their 25 [pound sterling] million fundraising campaign and clearly be entitled to the museum's fullest attention.

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