Gilbert Collection

The Cast Courts (originally called the Architectural Courts) of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, comprise two large halls. Unusually for a museum, the Cast Courts house a collection not of originals, but copies. Here are to be found reproductions of some of the most famous sculptures in the world. Most of the copies were made in the 19th century and in many cases they have better resisted the ravages of time, 20th-century pollution and over-zealous conservation than the originals. In a few cases, such as the late 15th century Lübeck relief of Christ washing the Apostles' feet, the original has been destroyed and the cast is a unique record of a lost work.

Neptune and Triton is an early sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It is housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum of London and was executed c. 1622–1623. Carved from marble, it stands 182.2 cm (71.7 in) in height.

The V&A Rotunda Chandelier (often known as V&A Chandelier and originally called Ice Blue and Spring Green Chandelier) is a glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. It hangs under the glass rotunda at the entrance to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London. Considered to be an artwork as much as a source of light, it was installed in 1999 and then substantially altered and enlarged to its current size in 2001, coinciding with a V&A exhibition of the artist's work.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts, and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The V&A is located in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in an area known as "Albertopolis" because of its association with Prince Albert, the Albert Memorial and the major cultural institutions with which he was associated. These include the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the Royal Albert Hall and Imperial College London. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. As with other national British museums, entrance is free. The V&A covers 12.5 acres (5.1 ha) and 145 galleries. Its collection spans 5,000 years of art, from ancient times to the present day, from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. However, the art of antiquity in most areas is not collected. The holdings of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, silver, ironwork, jewellery, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints and printmaking, drawings and photographs are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world. The museum owns the world's largest collection of post-classical sculpture, with the holdings of Italian Renaissance items being the largest outside Italy. The departments of Asia include art from South Asia, China, Japan, Korea and the Islamic world. The East Asian collections are among the best in Europe, with particular strengths in ceramics and metalwork, while the Islamic collection is amongst the largest in the Western world. Overall, it is one of the largest museums in the world. Since 2001, the museum has embarked on a major £150m renovation programme. New 17th- and 18th-century European galleries were opened on 9 December 2015. These restored the original Aston Webb interiors and host the European collections 1600–1815. The Young V&A in east London is a branch of the museum, and a new branch in London – V&A East – is being planned. The first V&A museum outside London, V&A Dundee opened on 15 September 2018.

The bust of Thomas Baker is a 1638 marble portrait sculpture created by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, with much of the bust undertaken by a pupil of Bernini, probably Andrea Bolgi. It is currently held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, who purchased the bust in 1921 for 1480 English guineas.

The Destruction of the Country House 1875–1975 was an exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 1974, commissioned by V&A Director Roy Strong and curated by John Harris, Marcus Binney and Peter Thornton (then working, respectively, at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Country Life magazine and the V&A Department of Furniture and Woodwork). The exhibition included a "Hall of Destruction", decorated with falling columns and illustrations of some of the thousand country houses demolished since 1875, brought down by falling estate incomes, rising costs, death duties, and damage caused by government requisitioning during the Second World War. Described as a "landmark" exhibition, the graphic illustration of the scale of destruction of Britain's built heritage changed public opinion and encouraged moves to protect the country houses that remained. The success of the exhibition inspired the formation of the campaigning group, Save Britain's Heritage, in 1975 – a year that was designated as European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe - but the changed public mood could not prevent the sale of the extraordinary collection of art and furniture at Mentmore Towers in 1975, and of the empty building itself in 1977, to pay taxes following the death of Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery in 1973. The exhibition was followed in 1977 and 1979 by two further exhibitions at the V&A on British architectural heritage: Change and Decay: The Future of our Churches (curated by Strong, Binney and Peter Burman), and then The Garden: A Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening (organised by Harris).

Britain Can Make It was an exhibition of industrial and product design held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1946. It was organised by the Council of Industrial Design, later to become the Design Council.

The V&A Village Fete is an annual event held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.The fete aims to put an alternative spin on the traditional English village fete and features stalls from established names and newcomers in the UK's creative industries, in particular from the fields of Graphic Design and Fashion. According to an article in industry title Design Week, "the aim of the line-up is to provide a current snapshot of contemporary design, looking at both practices and individuals".

The National Art Library (NAL) is a major reference library, situated in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), a museum of decorative arts in London. The NAL holds the UK's most comprehensive collection of both books as art and books about art, which includes many genres and time periods. The NAL is open to the public, and as a closed reference library, items must be requested through the staff and cannot be removed from the reading room. The collections cover a wide range of art and design topics, including books about artists and art techniques, and consists of many different collections materials, including archival materials, artist's books, and children's literature. The library also serves as the museum's curatorial department for book arts. As a reference library, the NAL also serves as a training library for students, curators and museum staff, and the public.The current mission of the NAL includes making information about art history and practice widely available, and aims to serve both national and international communities.

Cromwell Gardens is a short but major road in South Kensington, within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. It joins the Cromwell Road at the junction with Exhibition Road to the west with the Brompton Road to the east. To the north, the main facade and entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum is a dominant feature. To the south, on the corner with Exhibition Road, is the Ismaili Centre, a religious, social, and cultural meeting place for the UK Ismaili community. To the north at the junction with Brompton Road is the Brompton Oratory. The road forms part of the major A4 trunk road into central London. Immediately to the south is the Yalta Memorial Garden, Thurloe Place and Thurloe Square.The nearest tube station is South Kensington.

The Yalta Memorial Garden (or the Cromwell Gardens Triangle or Thurloe Place Gardens) is a small triangular garden in South Kensington, west London, SW7. It is 0.0417 hectares (0.103 acres) in size. The garden contains Twelve Responses to Tragedy (or the Yalta Memorial), a memorial located that commemorates people displaced as a result of the Yalta Conference at the conclusion of World War II. The memorial was dedicated in 1986 to replace a previous memorial dedicated in 1982 that had been repeatedly damaged by vandalism.The land on which the garden is situated was first described in 1928 when it was part of the Crown Estate by the Report of the Royal Commission on London Squares as a 'grass plot with a few trees'.The garden is located at the junction of Cromwell Gardens, Thurloe Place and is adjacent to the private Thurloe Square. The Victoria & Albert Museum is immediately north of the garden, on the opposite side of Cromwell Gardens. The museum maintains the garden. The garden and memorial are publicly accessible at all times.

Twelve Responses to Tragedy, or the Yalta Memorial, is a memorial located in the Yalta Memorial Garden on Cromwell Road in South Kensington in west London. The memorial commemorates people displaced as a result of the Yalta Conference at the conclusion of the Second World War. Created by the British sculptor Angela Conner, the work consists of twelve bronze busts atop a stone base. The memorial was dedicated in 1986 to replace a previous memorial (also by Conner) from 1982 that had been repeatedly damaged by vandalism.