What does a museum do when forced to close for months? At the V&A, they’ve cleaned, repaired, renovated, bubblewrapped – and kept burglars at bay. Our writer takes a tour
The Victoria & Albert Museum is a strange place to be on this late-February morning. The staircases and deserted hallways echo to my footsteps. A top-floor gallery looks naked, with gaps on the walls and improvised labels where works of art should be. Next to the doors leading to the courtyard, the plaster casts are swaddled in bubblewrap, as if sheltering from the chill.
It isn’t just London’s museumland, of course. Galleries and museums up and down the UK are stuck in suspended animation. Closed along with nearly every public building a year ago, they were permitted to open again in the summer, before having to bolt their doors again a few months later. Places in lower-risk areas stuck it out into December, before succumbing to the latest national lockdowns. According to the latest plans, it will be mid-May at the earliest before we’re able to step inside again.
