Museum’s revitalised galleries bring together 250 objects to show how design shapes modern life
What do the first ever baby monitor, Nigeria’s 2018 World Cup kit, an 80s boombox, the smashed parts of Edward Snowden’s computer, a “Please offer me a seat” badge and a Labubu have in common? They are all included in the V&A’s Design 1990-Now galleries, which reopen to the public this week.
The galleries, which run across two rooms on the upper floors of the museum, also house a collection of antique books. The displays cover six different themes including housing and living, crisis and conflict, and consumption and identity, rather than in a strict chronological order.
With 250 exhibits, including 60 new additions, this can mean different takes on one theme across decades, as with the women at work section. It features a power suit from 1986 – but also a plastic-lined bra worn by women working on production lines in China to avoid being searched, and a pair of fast-fashion jeans like those made in the factories at the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh that collapsed due to a structural failure.
The exhibits also demonstrate how history repeats itself, by using designs decades apart. This is clear with a poster calling for “No More Racist Murders” after the death of the teenager Rohit Duggal in 1992, which is displayed next to one commemorating Eric Garner, the Black man killed by a white police officer in 2014.
