The V&A Dundee Museum is an £80 Million Mistake
It's hard to express how disappointed I am with the V&A Dundee museum – how incredulous I was at its tiny permanent gallery when I first visited, and how annoyed I've been by its gaslighting of visitors who had the temerity to point this out.
So I've wanted to write this photo essay (included below) for some time, but I decided to be responsible and wait for two things. Firstly, to finish the draft of my gamification book, which I did last month, and secondly, to give the V&A Dundee museum enough time to improve its ways.
Well, the museum opened almost three years ago, and granted, there's been a pandemic, but I haven't heard anything that's made me change my assessment. And to be honest, I just wanted to get it out of my head.
I'm still vacillating over what to do with the essay now it's finished. Most of my followers and readers don't live in Scotland and aren't likely to have a strong reaction to this, but I'm a little nervous about sharing it with places like r/Scotland on Reddit. Or perhaps I'm just waiting for the right moment. We'll see...
What’s your favourite museum and what does it look like?
For me, it’s hard to choose between the V&A Museum in London, with its beautiful, endless art and design galleries and its stylish special exhibitions; and the Exploratorium in San Francisco, which does the best job of explaining science and technology I’ve ever seen; and of course, the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, home to an entire 64-gun warship.
But I have no memory of the Vasa Museum looks like from the outside. For all I know, it’s a huge featureless box, just like the Exploratorium. And while I do remember the V&A’s red brickwork, it blurs together with other Victorian buildings across the UK. I couldn’t care less what my favourite museums look like, because what I love about them sits inside their walls.
The new V&A Dundee museum is the polar opposite. With its angular slate-grey profile set against the River Tay, it’s unforgettable. Like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, you’ll see it in every Dundee tourist guide for decades to come.
It just has one problem: there’s barely anything inside. It’s not a museum, it’s an £80 million public sculpture.
Read the rest on my blog – there are too many photos to include here!