The Brexit debate has encouraged assertions about who we are and how much more prosperous and greater Great Britain will be once freed from Brussels. A glorious future awaits as a trading nation whose long-term inability to match Germany and France (or many others) in exporting to places such as China will be overturned by going it alone. We live in hope that the Chinese are not only prepared rapidly to strike a deal with us but that we will benefit from it.
In the meantime, Brexiteers and Remainers can celebrate some things that Britain does well. The V&A has just opened a gallery and exhibition in Shenzhen in southern China — a 45-minute drive from Hong Kong — as a central part of a sparkling new museum dedicated to design. It is the first UK museum to open a site on this scale outside the country.
But this is a venture that goes beyond a gallery. The Chinese, as passionate about self-improvement as they are about commerce, are opening museums at a fantastic lick — about 400 a year — but this one is particularly ambitious and strikingly international.
Three and a half years ago the company putting up the money, the state-owned China Merchants Group, was looking for help with the project. It had no reservations about going outside China to get it and asked the V&A to form a partnership.
And here it is — built on land reclaimed from the bay and an emphatic statement of China’s desire to have more goods and services “created in China” rather than merely “made in China”.
The choice of the V&A reflects a tremendous two decades for our great museums, with audience numbers climbing and reputations embellished by magnificent exhibition programmes.
The V&A’s gallery in China —”Values of Design” — enhanced by recent acquisitions from Shenzhen itself , challenges the Chinese audience to think about design as part of a debate not simply as an agent of economic progress. There are object descriptions that encourage reflection about needless waste, poor manufacturing conditions and regulatory systems that can’t always keep pace. There has been no objection from the authorities.
Throughout the opening ceremonies it was palpable that the many Chinese involved in the venture admired not only the V&A, but aspects of Britain. They used familiar words such as “maturity” and “experience” — I write to report and not pass judgment — it was not hard to detect Brexit bafflement. “You should be leading the EU, not leaving it,” they said.
Mark Damazer, CBE, is Master of St Peter’s College, Oxford, and a V&A trustee
