“The longer we heard, the more we looked” Music at the Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum, as the world's leading museum of art, design and performance, has a long‐standing engagement with music, being among the first European museums to collect and exhibit musical instruments, and to integrate sound‐related artefacts into many of its collections. This is due to its particular history as well as the personality and interests of its forefathers. This involvement with music has been made particularly spectacular through ground‐breaking exhibitions devoted to rock music but also tackling a particular genre like classical opera. This article looks first at the V&A's relation to sound through an historical perspective, followed by an overview of the most innovative examples of sound‐related exhibitions and a specific exhibition case study.