Victoria and Albert Museum - 26 January 2011

All that you need to know about art and design can be found in the wonderful place known as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its extraordinary collection of sensibility and beauty is displayed in dimly lit rooms which have an atmosphere of interiority usually found in sacred spaces. The halls and galleries invoke the kind of mood best suited to contemplation where, in glowing cases, fabulous things give up their presence to patient eyes. The heart is filled with joy at the surprises which can bubble up from gazing at a row of ancient Korean spoons, a humble figurine from the Han dynasty or a gorgeous Ikat coat from Uzbekistan. In whatever direction you turn you find sublime ingenuity and unsurpassed craftsmanship. The latter is none other than the materialisation of care and tenderness towards the substance of expression. Often the maker is unknown and it can be refreshing to gaze at something unmediated by the baggage of art history or cultural reputation. Yet context is never lost because at its root the experience of art and design is not really of the intellect or indeed of history, but of feeling and being connected to something much bigger than our individual selves. It's true we can't do without an analytic mind but in the presence of an embroidered sixteenth-century fragment from Peru, asking questions seemed as banal as the answers were ineffable. All we could do was look and feel and carry away with us that day a reminder of what might be possible with a good eye and a marvellous collection like the V&A.