Global and Local - an interview with Martin Roth, Director of the V&A
The stunning range of cultural activity continues to evolve across London - with East London to get a new cultural hub ‘Olympicopolis’, as the V&A, Smithsonian, Sadlers Wells and the London College of Fashion open new facilities in the Olympic Park. In this interview, the V&A’s director Martin Roth talks about his ambitions for the site and the exciting possibilities that emerge through sharing practices with other institutions.
GERALDINE BEDELL: The V&A is nationally and internationally important, so how does that affect its relationship with London?
MARTIN ROTH: Could the V&A be somewhere else? No, it’s absolutely a London institution. I think of it as the global museum for a local community and the local museum for a global community. It’s made for everyone, and that was the idea from the start. It’s the perfect institution for London, a city that has always been a capital for a global community, and where there are a lot of ambitious people, a lot of industrious people, a lot of people who want to learn more and who use the V&A as an archive of ideas and an inspiration for the future. It has been a platform for interpretation – for William Morris, Jonathan Ive, Alexander McQueen – and it continues to inspire the many young people who come in today.
GB: The V&A is part of London’s first planned cultural quarter. What makes a great cultural quarter in the 21st century?
MR: The idea of having this South Kensington campus, conceived in the 1860s, is brilliant. Show me one other example around the world that has such a cluster of great institutions – the V&A, Imperial College, the Royal College of Art, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum… The original plan of Prince Albert – I am putting this too simply – was to have great research at Imperial College showcased in the Science Museum; international relations, especially India, showcased in the V&A; engineering in Scotland showcased in the V&A; amazing expeditions to the Amazon showcased in the Natural History Museum and so on – and that’s probably what did happen in the 19th century.
Today we are each so specialised, so strong in our own domains, it can’t work like that. So what I am saying is that if you look at it positively, we’re not showcasing each other anymore – but we are contributing different ways of thinking. If you want to take a more negative view of what’s happened over time then you might say we sit more in silos than we originally did. They don’t always fit together.
GB: What do you hope to do at Olympicopolis that you can’t do here?
MR: We can do everything here and I don’t want to change the way the V&A mother ship is; we just want it to be better. But – this is the only way I can explain it – if this is the glossy magazine, where everything takes a bit more time – exhibitions in the galleries in a very beautiful way – what will happen in east London will be more Huffington Post, more of an immediate reaction. Something happens outside and, with the help of our collection, we will respond. Just to give you one example: we have a beautiful collection from Syria – the V&A has worked with Damascus for 150 years – so, if V&A East existed already, not to be showing something from Syria right now would be wrong.
The basic idea for E20 or V&A East for me is synergies. It’s about working with other institutions – not always knowing exactly what that means or where it will take us, but having that very inspiring neighbourhood. We will have a big exhibition space and we are happy to share it with other institutions. Sadler’s Wells will be there, doing more cutting-edge forms of dance, and we have a lot of material unused in our theatre and performance collection. So we can do great things together. We will make these kinds of instant exhibitions, and we will work with practitioners – from east London and elsewhere.
GB: So it will be a museum with no permanent collection?
MR: Well, what is a permanent collection going to mean a few years from now? With new technologies, with the ability to create something new with visitors… I don’t believe that starting a new museum in a traditional and static way would be right. I mean, it needs a long-term perspective but it shouldn’t be static.
That said, we are intending to move all our objects in storage – 2.5m of them – from Blythe House in west London to a new location, hopefully also in east London, and show them there in a way that is totally accessible, as a kind of active archive, where you can come with your family or your teachers and explore.
GB: London’s population is growing… Assuming it continues to grow, do we need new institutions or should we be investing in a different way, in other forms of production and consumption of culture?
MR: I am the wrong person to ask because I’m always going to defend what we’re doing. Let’s face it, London is the world capital, so it should also be the world capital of culture. Sure, it’s always good to have something new and inspiring – but I used to be President of the German Museums Association and I didn’t always make friends by saying we don’t always have to fund all the cutting-edge new ideas: let’s fund the traditional, national or international high-class institutions. That doesn’t mean that I don’t support all those new ideas. But I think it needs a while before you pump money into things.
GB: What is the effect of digital technology on museums? Do buildings still matter, does location matter? It’s not hard to envisage that quite soon we will all be able to have access to all the V&A’s objects online.
MR: In Paris in 1900, a 3D cinema opened and the press declared it was the end of the museum. The end of the museum has been predicted many times since – yet we have more visitors than ever before.
We have to remember that a museum is not always the same institution: it’s constantly changing, with the society, with the environment, with the political situation. Digital technology is something for museums to embrace.
GB: When the V&A was founded it had a didactic aspect. How is your approach different for an era that sees the audience as active rather than passive?
MR: You are right: it was more didactic, but at the same time, they did a lot of brilliant things that required real empathy and thought about the audience.
There is something called the aura of an object – this was talked about by Walter Benjamin and is probably an overused concept – but the longer I work in the field, the more convinced I am that that is absolutely right. Why do people travel around the world to see a tiny handwritten paper by David Bowie? You can see it online. We have it online, you can read it; you can make it so big that you can see all the details. You could hardly read it in that showcase. But people queued up in front of the showcase to see it. So there is something about the real object. And our responsibility is the real stuff.
GB: Do you see it as part of your role to foster pride in London?
MR: Sure, you can’t live in this city and not feel pride. No, honestly, I really mean it. If you aren’t born here or you come from a different country, then your identity is even more committed. You have to adjust and then the city’s really great to you.
But the moment I retire I will leave immediately. Not because I don’t like it – and I am definitely a person who can cope with the fact that I am not invited everywhere; that I have to sit in the second row and not the first row. It’s just the pace: heading out at 7.30 in the morning, running, running, running – and then you come back at 12 o’clock at night for four or five hours sleep.
I see a major problem, a really major problem that young people can’t afford to live here. We have people working here who have to commute an hour and a half, every morning, every evening. It’s not just the artists, but young graduates of all sorts, if they are not in banking. Sometimes, colleagues from the curatorial staff say that sooner or later it will be just people from affluent backgrounds or wealthy spouses doing their jobs. It’s no longer about quality, it’s a question of who can afford to live in London and do this kind of work.
GB: What is the thread that links V&A now to Prince Albert’s idea of the V&A?
MR: It’s my accent! We absolutely follow his legacy – I mean, it’s not only him, it’s Henry Cole and a lot of other people, working together. He wanted to make education open for everyone – and the idea of that restaurant down there, that you could offer a decent restaurant meal for people who don’t have servants in the kitchen at home, in a beautiful atmosphere, was very radical. It’s all about the beautiful atmosphere: a decent meal, not very expensive, and once your stomach is satisfied, you go and see more. It is a very great legacy and what we do is very close to it.
This is an extract from London Essays, a journal published by Centre for London and supported by Capital and Counties Properties PLC. The full collection of essays are available at essays.centreforlondon.org.
