V&A: The Civic and the Global. A Lecture by Tristram Hunt

Dr Tristram Hunt is Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London—the world’s leading museum of art, design, and performance. Since taking up the post in 2017, Dr Hunt has prioritised support for design education in UK schools, expansion of the photography department, and encouraging debate around the history of the museum’s global collections. He has overseen the opening of the new Exhibition Road Quarter and record visitor numbers to its South Kensington site. Dr Hunt’s priorities are focused on the transition to a multi-site museum with V&A Dundee, the redesign of the V&A Museum of Childhood, and the development of a new museum partnership with the Smithsonian Institution and an open access Collections and Research Centre in Stratford, East London.

Prior to joining the V&A, Dr Hunt was Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central and Shadow Secretary of State for Education.  He has a doctorate in Victorian history from the University of Cambridge on Civic Thought in Britain 1820-1860 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  In addition to numerous radio and TV programmes for the BBC, he is the author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (2005), Friedrich Engels: The Frock-Coated Communist (2009) and Ten Cities That Made an Empire (2014).