IN RECENT YEARS the Victoria and Albert Museum has experienced a Renaissance. Since its nadir in the early 1990s, the Museum has recovered its confidence and sparkle, manifest not only in its successful temporary exhibitions but also, more fundamentally, in its new permanent galleries, of which those devoted to Europe 1600–1815 opened before Christmas.

THE GRAND SHOW Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age was first shown at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (closed 17th January), where this reviewer saw it, and thereafter moves to the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (27th February to 5th June). Its main focus is luxury products made in Asia (chiefly China, India and Japan) that were imported and enjoyed by wealthy burghers of Amsterdam during the ‘Golden Age’ of the seventeenth century. Made of precious materials and adorned with intriguing exotic patterns no one had ever seen before, the Asian treasures caused a sensation in Holland.