The V&A's Taylor Swift Songbook Trail

It’s always a pleasure to have an excuse to go to the V&A. I realized it had been more than a year since I’d last been there when I turned up on the second day (I didn’t want to seem too eager) of the new Taylor Swift Songbook Trail.

My reaction was, as it is to most things, one of deep and passionate ambivalence.

The Songbook Trail is obviously an attempt to cajole families, including tourists in town for volume two of Taylor Swift’s London Eras Tour dates, out of the merciless heat and into the cool embrace of the museum. And there were a number of children who seemed very excited to be there.

But I did wonder to what extent the audiences who turned up for the Trail were actually being encouraged to look at the permanent exhibits. Much of the first part of the trail is laid out going backwards chronologically through the British collections. Of course you don’t have to proceed chronologically through a collection to enjoy or understand it, but in general it felt like the Songbook Trail was laid out against the stream of the art.

And, from what I could tell, it felt like most people were following the signs straight on to the next Taylor Swift element rather than lingering to look at other things. I think that’s fine as long as that’s their decision; there are some occasions in which you might want to look at Taylor Swift costumes and not Arts and Crafts wallpaper. But the trail did very little to encourage engagement with the other works of art that the objects are placed next to.

There were some clever visual decisions, like placing the dress from the music video for “Love Story,” which is a song famously based on Romeo and Juliet, on a balcony above some Renaissance art (the Raphael cartoons). And I am sure the Songbook Trail was thoughtfully put together; you can tell that from this piece from the Guardian in conversation with Katie Bailey, the curator of the Trail. I learned a lot from this piece about why certain decisions had been made. For example, the first stop on the tour is Swift’s outfit from the music video for “The Man” and it’s in galleries with late nineteenth century British art. Why? The text accompanying the outfit was almost laughably curt and gave no information about its placement or the objects around it: “This look transformed Swift into a 'playboy millionaire' for her The Man video. Directed by Swift, the video plays with gender stereotypes. The single is taken from her Lover album, which is a playful and celebratory work, in contrast to the darker tone of the preceding album reputation.” It turns out, I learned from the Guardian, that this outfit is surrounded by works that are “all by male artists,” many of which depict women. This, Bailey notes, “speaks to the patriarchal presentation of the male artist and Taylor’s relationship with the patriarchy.” That’s great, I love it, but I had no idea from actually being in the gallery and looking at how the objects were presented that this was the point being made. Given that the purpose of the exhibition is to welcome an audience into the museum that might not ordinarily be that interested in or excited about the V&A, and so presumably doesn’t have an art history background, why not actually make clear the connections you’re drawing between those collections and Taylor Swift? If anything, this audience does not need an explanation of the album Lover. They do need to be prompted to think about the gender stereotypes and assumptions around who is an artist.

A review of the exhibition in the New York Times (gift link) suggests that it forces audience members to engage with the objects as if figuring out easter eggs, which I think is reasonable except that, because Swift herself is not responsible for setting up the exhibition, I doubt this is the mindset many people will be approaching it with. After reading this piece and the one in the Guardian, I’m tempted to go back and spend more time with the objects. I didn’t initially have much faith that there was a point of view to the exhibition or any kind of point being made beyond capitalizing on Swift’s current popularity, and the text accompanying the objects seemed to prove that that was the case. But after reading these two articles, I am more inclined to think that this is a problem with communication rather than design.

The New York Times article linked above is especially interesting because it discusses the amount of secrecy involved in the setup. It’s not clear why the secrecy was necessary (in case Swift changed her mind? to avoid media scrutiny?). But at any rate if the timeline cited in the article is to be believed - that they planned this after Swift’s first London tour dates - the Trail was put together very quickly.

This might be why they don’t have a large variety of things on show. The Trail is essentially just costumes Swift has worn on tour or in a music video, with the occasional instrument or prop. The V&A famously hired some superfans to advise them on what material culture related to Swift to collect, but there isn’t much to show for this yet (they also included some friendship bracelets and vinyl editions of the most recent non-rerecording albums, which are honestly not very exciting). The costumes are being lent to them by Swift.

Anyway, speaking of design decisions, I would love to know why they placed the dress from the “Fortnight” music video on a pile of books including many volumes of a history of Napoleon in French. They don’t say whether these are Swift’s books (unlikely) or just some random books they dug up somewhere (very likely). Is there an implication that Swift too is a foreign conqueror trying to land on England’s shores?

Other people were standing around taking pictures of the dress as I was taking my pictures of the books and one of them looked over at me and then also started taking pictures of the books so maybe they will figure this one out.

But anyway, it was nice to have an excuse to go to the V&A.