The V&A, formerly known as the Victoria & Albert Museum, has opened a subsidiary in the former port district of the Scottish city of Dundee, in an £80m building designed to represent a vessel jutting out into the River Tay.
The building is being likened to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which also has a maritime-inspired design and revived the Spanish city when it was built in the 1990s on the site of a former shipyard.
Dundee's former industrial strengths — the production of jute, a rough fibre used to make sacks, burlap, twine and canvass, and then major manufacturing sites for Timex watches and Sinclair computers — have closed down over time, and the town now has the worst record for drug-related deaths in Scotland. The hope is that the V&A will trigger a revival.
Speed and style
With a focus on design, the museum’s first touring exhibition will be a show on the romantic and remarkable age of ocean travel, titled Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, which was on display at the original V&A in London earlier this year.
The exhibit reimagines the golden age of ocean travel, allowing visitors to experience what it was like to sail onboard one of the great "floating palaces" that operated on liner services across the oceans before airlines took over the tourist and passenger shipping trades.
Dundee’s regenerated waterfront already has two nautical museums: RRS Discovery, Captain Scott’s Antarctic expedition ship; and the 19th-century warship, HMS Unicorn.
It is also hoped the new museum can provide a jumping-off point for an attempt to host a Creative Cities World Festival in 2022.
