BALTIMORE, MD. -- London's Victoria and Albert Museum, established in 1852, was one of the first collecting institutions designed for the common man. On their treks across the pond, Americans have long explored the museum's imposing Victorian building in the South Kensington district in search of particular treasures. With a collection of over four million paintings and decorative objects, visitors do well to specialize. But now the V&A is paying a visit to North America. Some of its stellar pieces are touring five cities, starting with the Baltimore Museum of Art on October 12. As befits a blockbuster show, "A Grand Design" was ten years in the making.

"The original approach came from Baltimore," explains project coordinator Malcolm Baker, who is deputy head of research at the Victoria and Albert. "A lot of thought and the contributions of many people have gone into this exhibition. Initially, Arnold Lehman (the BMA's former director who now heads the Brooklyn Museum of Art) and Brenda Richardson were interested in having an exhibition of works from the V&A, and they spoke to our former director, Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Co. We lend objects, of course, to exhibitions in Britain and throughout the world, but this is the first exhibition consisting solely of material from the V&A which has come to North America, certainly the first that represents the whole range of the museum's collections."

"One of the challenges was deciding what objects to select," continues Baker. "We wanted to give an impression of the richness of the V & A and also tell the story of how the collections were formed. We wanted to bring out how a collection can be used in different ways at different times. So it's about how the museum has used the collection in the past and how it's being used now. It's such an influential model that to tell the story of the V&A is to say a great deal about the history of museums in general."

Project co-director Brenda Richardson, deputy director for art at the Baltimore Museum, agrees. "Prior to the founding of the Victoria & Albert, museums were the domain of kings and popes, aristocrats and scholars. The V&A was the first museum open to the public, and this public was a population who could not afford to travel to the Continent and see these great treasures of art so they were provided copies of the art they should see," Richardson said.

In addition to miles of original objects, the Victoria and Albert still contains a cast court to contain copies, considered an important teaching tool of all major museums in the Nineteenth Century. Sir Henry Cole, who ran the museum from 1853 to 1873, believed the public could be taught good design by looking at great art. Originals should be purchased if possible, but, if not, exact copies of famous works of arts could be produced by plaster casting and electrotype. Thus the public in London could view Michelangelo's David and the Portico de la Gloria from the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela without ever leaving its home town. The current exhibition uses photo murals of the court as well as some of the smaller casts to illustrate how museums formerly used these copies to bring art to a public that could not afford the Grand Tour.

Another attempt to project the distinctive experience of being at the V&A is a case in the show that contains 30 brass candlesticks near a photo of a typical museum gallery packed with similar cases filled with objects. According to Malcolm Baker, "One of the striking things about the V&A, which admittedly differs from a lot of major museums, is that it has galleries with large amounts of material out on display. For example, you can go to the top floor of the building, start at one corner and walk all along the side of the building and right along the front - and it's a pretty big building - and you will see nothing but ceramics, and each case is very full. The conventional wisdom is that you have a quarter of a mile of ceramics. The collection was assembled to show this encyclopedic range and was organized according to particular materials. We now supplement this approach with galleries arranged along period and cultural lines."

In addition to being encyclopedic, the Victoria & Albert Museum has become extremely diverse in its holdings. A visit to its well-designed website at www.van.ac.uk acquaints browsers with V & A's great assemblage of Constables, a costume collection that spans four centuries of European fashion, and the largest group of Indian art outside of India. While some visitors to the show may be attracted to the Thirteenth Century enameled reliquary from France, others will remember the beautiful Fourth-Fifth Century head of Buddha from Afghanistan or the blue mock-croc platform shoes from the 1990s, ones which once caused model Naomi Campbell to fall on the runway.

Alison Cahen, the BMA's efficient public relations coordinator for the show, remembers that originally the V&A offered only one shoe but eventually Baltimore got the spectacular pair, which has become a show icon. "There was a lot of compromise on behalf of both museums to get various things, a ten-year process, back and forth," she points out. "The curatorial team wanted an exhibition that wouldn't be just a greatest hits star tour but a show that probed the issues of why museums exist today and why museums collect what they collect. Why is this object important and that one not? What makes good craftsmanship and what does not?"

Both the exhibition "A Grand Design: Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum," and the 432-page catalogue co-edited by Richardson and Baker are divided into six major sections, which progress chronologically with several detours. Within the show's installation, each section from the opening "Industrial Arts and the Exhibition Ideal" through "Teaching by Example: Education and the Formation of the South Kensington Museums," "An Encyclopedia of Treasures: The Ideal of the Great Collection," "The Empire of Things: The Engagement of the Orient," "National Consciousness, National Heritage, and the Idea of `Englishness'" down to the concluding "Collecting the Twentieth Century" is color-coded for easy recognition. Students of Modernism will be particularly impressed by the objects in this last category, which range from Twentieth Century furniture to fashion, a collecting area emphasized by the V&A since the 1970s.

Brenda Richardson stresses the efforts made by everyone involved to preserve the serve-the-public spirit on which the V&A was founded and create an exhibition that was neither daunting nor dryly academic. "American urban museums are very aware of the need to be accessible to a broad public audience. So, in terms of developing the themes - the way the objects are presented and the language of the catalogue - accessibility was a very important motivation for me as co-organizer and co-editor."

Malcolm Baker also feels that his goals have been achieved. "We're very happy that material from the Victoria & Albert Museum will be shown in all these major American venues. One of the aims as far as we're concerned is to make our collections known to a wider audience of American museum visitors and give people an idea of the range and July richness of the collections."

Alison Cahen adds in conclusion, "The Victoria and Albert is a very serious museum, but it wanted to improve its profile internationally. Part of the reason for doing the tour was to show the American audience what the V&A is about. It's not only one of the most important museums in the world, it's really the prototype for many American museums which also attempt to educate. So this exhibition has much to offer scholars and also to satisfy people who want to see objects that will blow them away. Ten years is a long time, but it's the biggest project we've ever done."

The Baltimore Museum of Art is on Art Museum Drive at North Charles and 31st Streets, three miles north of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Hours are Wednesday through Friday, 11 am-5 pm, Saturday and Sunday, 11 am-6 pm. Admission to "A Grand Design: Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum" is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and students. For advance tickets, I-888-BMA-4-Art CQ.

The exhibition continues in Baltimore until January 18, 1998, then it moves on to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (February 25-May 17, 1998); Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (June 20-September 13, 1998); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (October 18, 1998-January 10, 1999); and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (February 13-May 9, 1999). The catalogue, A Grand Design: Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum, edited by Malcolm Baker and Brenda Richardson, was jointly published by Baltimore and Harry N. Abrams, Inc, and will be available for $60 at all these venues and through bookstores.