The Garden Indoors, V&A, 1979
A Look Back at the Making and Meaning of a Major Exhibition on Gardens
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19224740 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christos Montsenigos (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-23 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Visual Culture in Britain (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1471-4787 • E-ISSN: 1941-8361 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14714787.2026.2669128 |
| OpenAlex | W7161853224 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
Running from May 23 to August 26, 1979, The Garden was the last in a sequence of polemical exhibitions commissioned by director Roy Strong, positioning the Victoria and Albert Museum as a campaigning platform for British architectural heritage. Drawing on internal correspondence, planning documents, archival photographs, and the exhibition’s guide book, this article argues that The Garden consolidated broader cultural currents, among them the rehabilitation of Victorian culture, a re-enchantment with Britain’s imperial legacies, and renewed attachments to domesticity and Englishness, while marking a transitional moment in the museum’s self-fashioning at the threshold of the Thatcher era
Exhibition · Making-of · Meaning (existential) · Meaning-making · Architecture, Modernity, and Design · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Museums and Cultural Heritage
The Free Economy and the Strong State
Perpetual Spring' or Tempestuous Fall
Right to Buy’
A Crusade to Enfranchise the Many
An Enlightening Decade? New Histories of 1970s’ Britain
Close Encounters of the Wardian Kind
Government Under Stress. Britain's Winter of Discontent 1979
The Figure in the Landscape
The colonial roots of botany - legacies of empire in the botanic gardens of Oxford and Kew
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |