The V&A have defended their decision to turn down the offer of Margaret Thatcher’s wardrobe on the basis that it only collects items of ‘outstanding aesthetic or technical quality’ rather than those with ‘intrinsic social historical value’. Yet in the same statement, they also suggest that the museum is responsible for ‘chronicling fashionable dress’.
I’m not entirely sure how the V&A believes it can fillet out the ‘social historical value’ from their aim of ‘chronicling fashionable dress’. I’m also not sure I believe them. Thatcher is a divisive figure, and many people – some of them, presumably curators at the V&A, dislike her intensely. I do not know whether Martin Roth, the German director of the museum – takes particular umbrage with Thatcher. He has previously discussed the need to ‘reduce the barriers’ at museums – and the merits of free entry – while Thatcher was once described by the Museums Association as ‘no friend of museums’ because of her suggestion that they should charge entry.
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