The V&A up for sale? No it's just Elmgreen and Dragset's latest art prank
The Victoria and Albert Museum has been put up for sale - although the advert is in fact an artwork by Elmgreen and Dragset designed as a damning indictment of London's out-of-control property market.
A 25-metre hoarding along the front of the museum offers “a new residential development at a prime cultural heritage location”.
It is the final piece of a major installation, called Tomorrow, which has been created in five galleries of the V&A by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, the Scandinavian art duo Elmgreen and Dragset, who previously put a gold rocking horse on the Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth.
The installation is the fictional home of an architect, Norman Swann, who after a career of limited success, has lost the family fortune and has to sell his inherited home through the fictional “Crown Property Investment Group” which has erected the hoarding.
Elmgreen, 52, a Dane who lives between Covent Garden and Berlin, said: “It’s a very strong political comment. I think there’s something wrong with this city that can almost be traced back to the real estate market.”
The inflated prices of the property bubble accounted for the loss of local shops and proliferation of chain stores and explained why “only oligarchs and sheikhs” could afford to live in the centre of the city, he said.
“Not many people who work in central London can afford to live in central London. This hysterical boom in real estate prices is doing so much harm.”
There should be rent controls “but Boris Johnson would never introduce those,” he added.
Neither were museums immune to the madness. “It is almost like many of these cultural institutions have been eating growth hormones. Tate Modern is doubling its space. The V&A is enormous but it has an extension as well.”
Tomorrow, in partnership with AlixPartners, opens to the public from Oct 1 to January 2, admission free. vam.ac.uk/b/blog/network/tomorrow-elmgreen-dragset-va
