Director, Victoria and Albert Museum
Tristram Hunt is the director of the V&A — the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. Since taking up the post in 2017, he has championed design education in U.K. schools, encouraged debate around the history of the museum’s global collections and overseen the transition to a multisite museum, with the opening of V&A Dundee, the redesign of London’s Museum of Childhood and the development of a new museum and open-access collections center in Stratford, East London.
Prior to joining the V&A, Dr. Hunt was Labour M.P. for Stoke-on-Trent Central and shadow secretary of state for education. He has a doctorate in Victorian history from Cambridge University, has worked as a senior lecturer in history at Queen Mary University of London and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
In addition to contributing to numerous radio and TV programs for the BBC and Channel 4, Dr. Hunt is the author of several books, including “Ten Cities That Made an Empire” (2014); “The Lives of the Objects” (2019), telling the story of the V&A collection; and, most recently, “The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain” (2021).
