Ocean Liners: Speed and Style

Ocean Liners V&A

Experience a unique journey through the design stories of the world’s greatest ocean liners, including the Titanic, Normandie, the Queen Mary and the Canberra, and discover how these impressive vessels still loom large in our cultural imagination.

As the largest machines of their age by far, ocean liners have become powerful symbols of progress and 20th-century modernity. No other form of transport was so romantic, so remarkable or so contested.

From the mid-19th century to the late 20th century, the ocean liner revolutionised ocean travel. Ocean Liners: Speed & Style is the first exhibition to explore the design and cultural impact of the ocean liner around the world. Revealing the hidden design stories of some of the world’s greatest ocean liners, including the Titanic, Normandie, the Queen Mary and the Canberra, this exhibition re-imagines the golden age of ocean travel, with over 250 objects including paintings, sculpture, ship models, fashion, photographs, posters and film.

Beginning with Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s steamship, the Great Eastern of 1859, the exhibition will trace ocean liner design, from the Beaux-Arts interiors of Kronprinz Wilhelm, Titanic and its sister ship, Olympic, to the floating Art Deco palaces of Queen Mary and Normandie, and the streamlined Modernism of the SS United States and QE2. It will examine all aspects of these ships’ design – from ground-breaking engineering and fashionable interiors, to the lifestyle on board and their impact on art, architecture, design and film.

On display will be the Christian Dior suit worn by Marlene Dietrich as she arrived in New York aboard the Queen Mary in 1950, and a striking Lucien Lelong couture gown worn for the maiden voyage of Normandie in 1935. The exhibition will also showcase one of the most important flapper dresses in the V&A’s collection – Jeanne Lanvin’s ‘Salambo’ dress – a version of which was displayed at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925.

Ocean Liners: Speed & Style will explore how spaces on board changed as the requirements of new markets shifted attitudes, as well as the democratisation of travel and development of leisure activities in the 20th century. It will also consider the shrewd promotional strategies used by shipping companies to reposition the on-board experience, as emigration gave way to aspirational travel, and highlight the political shifts and the international rivalry that developed over 100 years, as liners became floating national showcases.

Duration 03 February 2018 - 10 June 2018
Times Daily: 10.00 – 17.45 Friday: 10.00 – 22.00
Cost £18 adults concessions apply free for members
Venue V&A
Address Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
Contact / vanda@vam.ac.uk / www.vam.ac.uk

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