A century and a half ago, the design museum (or “museum of applied arts” as it was then) was a revolutionary didactic idea. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the world’s first such museum, emerged in 1852 from the profits of the 1851 Great Exhibition. This vast bazaar of the world’s manufactured goods – presaging the World Expo – was an attempt to display the fruits of Britain’s industrial revolution, its empire and its wealth, while gently acknowledging the rest of the world
