Friday marks five years since the V&A Dundee opened its doors to the public after more than a decade of planning.
There was a sense a bold new era for the City of Discovery was underway as it launched with a spectacular opening weekend featuring performances from Primal Scream and Lewis Capaldi.
But the city’s flagship attraction, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, has not been without its critics.
Some have branded it an “£80million cafeteria” and it has also proven to be unpopular on TripAdvisor, with disgruntled reviewers claiming V&A Dundee is “all space and no action”.
Despite the sceptics, a new independent impact report has revealed the museum has generated £304m for the Scottish economy and attracted 1.7m visits since it opened, including 500,000 people who came to Dundee for the first time.
Ahead of the anniversary, Laura Devlin quizzed V&A Dundee chair Tim Allan and director Leonie Bell on its successes and the challenges it faces.
Tim Allan
Question. Do you think the V&A Dundee reflects the city or is it just an expensive attraction for outsiders?
Answer. “I think that’s a deeply unfair misconception. Can you imagine Dundee now without the V&A?
“I think it reflects exactly the ambition the city has had over the last 20 years – it’s symbolic of the change in Dundee.
“People say maybe it’s too middle class or too refined but actually if you look at what we have achieved, there’s been extensive outreach to our communities.
“And a lot of the visitors coming to the museum are repeat visitors from Dundee.
“So is it remote and distant from the city? Absolutely not.”
Q. Do you think there is enough in the museum to keep attracting visitors back?
A. “Maintaining people coming back to the city in the post pandemic world has been a challenge across the sector.
“I think we’ve done a fantastic job at capitalising on those visits to the city when people have perhaps been reluctant to travel.
“We can’t forget that two years of the five have been extraordinary, unparalleled times for the world.
“But the way you attract people to the museum and to the city is by putting on world class content.
“So we have to continue to produce high quality content that will make people come here and stay.”
Q. Outside of the exhibitions, the content of the museum has not really changed – is that an unfair criticism?
A. “A constant challenge for any museum or gallery across the world is keeping its content fresh.
“What we have to be clear is that the V&A Dundee is a young museum.
“It started only five years ago and it’s had two years of obstruction with the pandemic.
“We’ve (also) got the ongoing headwinds from the cost-of-living crisis.
“But you’re right, I would say – from what we are told – people are hungry for more fresh content.
“For example, the Scottish design galleries is very successful but probably needs to be someway reviewed along with the rest of the content.
“Although that comes down to money and that’s the difficult thing with what’s going on at the moment.”
Q. Is the current financial climate impacting the V&A Dundee and what it can offer?
A. “We have to make more of what we’ve got.
“We’ve moved to a one exhibition programme for the year which is a change from the the opening tradition of one major exhibition and a secondary one.
“That helps us manage our resources and time better but it also saves money.
“But the museum constantly needs to raise money.
“We raise around 25% of our annual revenue from the philanthropy of people in Scotland and that’s a very high ratio.
“We need constant investment and as chair, my number one priority is continued expansion of investment.
“I would love to have extraordinary, world-class events here every week but we just can’t afford it at the moment – that’s the reality.”
Q. The V&A Dundee has come under criticism for its recognition of the donation given by the Sackler Trust – why did it take so long to remove the plaque adorning their name?
A. “For a city which is not short of its drug-related issues, it was the right thing to do for the board to decide to remove the name all together from the museum.
“The standard approach (of institutions across the UK) is to keep the name on donor boards as a matter of recognition but we have deviated from that and decided we don’t want the name represented.
“But there are no conversations about returning the money to the Sacklers.”
Leonie Bell
Q. Some of the reviews on TripAdvisor that emerged last year were pretty brutal – do you and the team ever review this type of feedback?
A. “People review us in lots of different ways and TripAdvisor is one of them.
“Our position on TripAdvisor is the highest its ever been since lockdown and we are really proud of that.
“We do look at TripAdvisor, Google, Facebook, and what the media say so there’s a huge array of sources that we use to get feedback.
“And we analyse it and are responding to it all the time.”
Q. Are there plans to tour the Tartan exhibition around the world and will this bring money to the V&A Dundee?
A. “The V&A in London is probably one of the biggest tourers of design exhibitions in the world and that develops in income stream
“So we would love to tour our Tartan exhibition and and we are looking at building a bit of support for that at the moment.
“We’ve had interest from lots of different places so we are getting our plans and budgets lined up.”
Q. What’s been your proudest moment since joining the V&A Dundee?
A. “Opening the V&A Dundee up again in May 2021 with Night Fever and standing at the top the stairs as people were coming back for the first time was really emotional.
“That exhibition was all about dancing and nightclubs, which were all closed at the time, so it was especially poignant.
“And opening Tartan, the first significant home-grown exhibition of that scale. That will live long in the memory.”
Conversation