By Daniel Cassady
Senior Writer, ARTnews
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)in London has announced a exhibition of all things Taylor Swift—from dresses and cowboy boots to awards and unseen tidbits from her personal archive. It is set to open on July 27, according the Independent.
The free exhibition is titled Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail. According to the museum the show will focus on both her childhood, recording legacy, and rise to superstardom, with 13 distinct stops on the “trail” that correspond to a point in Swift’s career, beginning with her move to Nashville at 14-years-old.
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Among the standout items in the collection are a pair of cowboy boots Swift wore during her country music days and the black ruffled dress she wore in the music video for Fortnight, the single from her recently released album The Tortured Poet’s Department.
“Taylor Swift’s songs like objects tell stories, often drawing from art, history and literature. We hope this theatrical trail across the museum will inspire curious visitors to discover more about the performer, her creativity and V&A objects,” Kate Bailey, Senior Curator, Theatre & Performance at the V&A said in a press release.
The Songbook Trail comes on the heels of the UK leg of Swift’s monumental Eras tour, which by one account has taken over the British capital city. So much so that London’s mayor Sadiq Khan commissioned and shared a map of the city’s subway system called “Tube Map (Taylor’s Version),” with each line named after one of her albums and each stop after one of her songs, to be displayed at Wembley Park station, with an insert included in last Friday’s Evening Standard.
The tour was expected to bring around £300 million pounds into London, with Barclay’s estimating that the UK economy as a whole would get a £997 million boost thanks to Swifties spending more than 12 times the average UK citizen’s spends on a night out.
The V&A was ahead of the game. In February of this year the institution began looking for a Taylor Swift consultant who was “versed in handmade memorabilia, such as concert signs and friendship bracelets (which Swift is known for gifting at her shows).”
The Songbook Trail was conceived by the award-winning designer Tom Piper (mastermind of the V&A’s 2021 Alice in Wonderland exhibition). It will be staged in the South Kensington museum’s permanent galleries through September 8, 2024.
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