What is wrong at the V&A?

When it closed in March this year, the exhibition ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at the V&A Museum was praised for cleverly enticing an audience fascinated by fashion into learning about the culture of the ancient régime. The Queen’s story, as you don’t need Athena to tell you, did not end happily. Could the same now be true of the V&A?

It has enjoyed a long period in which its director, Sir Tristram Hunt, and his team have been lauded for one of the most ambitious extensions of any of our national museums in the past decade, the opening of two new sites in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London, the V&A East Museum and V&A East Storehouse. Yet, for some months now, much of the news emerging from the museum has been bad.

An initial sign that morale at the V&A was not all that it should be was the resignation in January this year of Yuko Kikuchi as head of academic programmes, claiming that there was ‘a culture of systemic racism within the organisation’, an accusation that the museum’s management strongly disputed.

Then, on two separate occasions in September, the museum was forced to close most of its buildings — first in east London, and then at its main site, in South Kensington — because of strikes by employees represented by the Prospect and Public and Commercial Services (PCS) unions, which were demanding a 4% pay increase for staff earning above the living wage. Only a last-minute improved offer from the V&A management averted a further strike over the half-term holiday in October.

The PCS has claimed that the V&A is projecting operational deficits amounting to a cumulative total of £19 million by 2030 and, although the museum has neither denied nor confirmed this figure, fears that it has serious financial problems seem to be justified. In October, staff were informed of a voluntary exit scheme, open to all (it was due to close on the 26th of last month). According to an unconfirmed report in the Art Newspaper, it is hoped that the workforce can be trimmed by up to 15%, including the loss of curatorial roles.

Also last month, the museum announced to universal dismay that the much-admired V&A Academy, launched in 2016 as a core part of the museum’s adult learning programme, is to be dismantled with the loss of about half of its 17 permanent staff.

What has gone wrong? When the creation of the east London museums was agreed, the Government increased the V&A’s grant-in-aid by £9 million a year to cover their running costs (in 2025–26 the total grant was £59.9 million). All the staff who spoke to Athena are convinced that the museum’s management fatally underestimated these new costs. It is time for the director and trustees to be frank about the causes of the predicament in which they find themselves.

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This feature originally appeared in the November 4, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.