![]() My boys, 10 and eight, lost themselves in a huge double-sided magnetic marble-run, where teamwork makes possible ever-more-elaborate tracks.Ī section on games, shadier and more secluded, contains desks at which new board-games can be designed alongside displays of new and old classics – as well as an explorable Minecraft version of the museum, complete with portals to fantastical spaces. Anything tactile but precious comes with feelable surrounds – a John Gibson marble bust sits behind glass, but on a marble bench – while the fully hands-on exhibits call on visitors to put their newly lubricated understandings of creation and design to the test. Another sets a 1913 Pilkington vase beside a 1986 action figure of Scourge the Decepticon and an 8th-century Tang dynasty cup – because all three are blue. In the pre-school-friendly section of the Play gallery, one cabinet shows off a series of antique silver hand-mirrors at baby-crawling height. In the Imagine gallery, geared towards children between the ages of five and 11, landscapes by Constable, Hockney and Hokusai hang beside the question: “Where are you going to go?”, while a 15th-century Swiss tapestry of mythical forest creatures and Christopher Reeve’s original costume from the 1978 Superman film are among the objects to prompt: “Who are you going to meet?” These aren’t exhibits so much as enticements for young (and less young) brains to make connections, draw comparisons, and see familiar objects through fresh eyes. The stroke of curatorial genius is that the toys and games one might expect to find here are now displayed alongside what would usually – and wrongly – be thought of as artefacts for grown-ups, all drawn from the V&A’s wider collections. (A fourth, currently empty, provides space for temporary exhibitions.) ![]() In place of the glass cellblocks of old is a Wonka factory of learning and discovery, split into three themed galleries named Play, Imagine and Design. What was once a museum of childhood is now a museum for children – and, I think, the best designed and curated my family and I have ever visited. ![]() Three years and £13 million later, this once-neglected offshoot of the Victoria and Albert Museum is reopening with a new name, Young V&A, and an irresistibly sparky new attitude. It wasn’t perfect, but it served a purpose. But entry was free, and the collection expansive – and you could tire out an average six-year-old with one full circuit. Yes, the place was a bit dusty and gloomy – and the rows of vitrines, with their playthings of old arranged in strict, unsmiling ranks, gave it the faintly unsettling air of a toy prison. When the Museum of Childhood in London’s Bethnal Green closed in 2020, local parents such as me were bereft.
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