The V&A Museum in London has announced a new raft of exhibitions for 2025 – including one on the 18th century French queen, Marie Antoinette.
The UK’s first ever exhibition on the monarch, and only the third to take place outside of France, aims to reclaim the narrative away from her cake-eating legacy and explore whether her villainy was justified.
Archival research will be placed alongside an exploration of the design, fashion and wider culture Marie Antoinette proved influential to. A wide range of media will be exhibited to retell the ill-fated queen’s story, and will ask visitors whether we should reconsider how we perceive such a complex and widely misunderstood figure in history. The exhibition will be sponsored by the luxury footwear label Manolo Blahnik.
The last queen of France before the French Revolution overthrew her husband, King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette was largely disliked by her contemporaries. She was widely known for extravagance and spending vast amounts of money – something that proved hugely unpopular to the French people, who were in the midst of a financial crisis. Unflatteringly nicknamed Madame Deficit, she was executed by guillotine in 1793.
However, she has remained a figure of fascination in more modern times; in 2020, a silk shoe said to belong to the queen was sold at auction in the Palace of Versailles for 43,750 euros (about £37,000).
She has been the subject of two films, with Sofia Coppola’s highly-stylised take on the queen released in 2006, in which Kirsten Dunst played Marie Antoinette.
The Marie Antoinette exhibition was announced alongside numerous other new endeavours. The V&A will also host an exhibition on Cartier, as well as Design and Disability; the latter will centre disability as a culture and an identity through its engagement with design, art, architecture, fashion and photography from the 1940s to now.
Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, said: “From show-stopping jewels and ancient amulets to innovative architecture and product design to fashion fit for a queen, the V&A’s ambitious 2025 programme across our family of sites will celebrate creativity, ingenuity and craftsmanship. The V&A will mix the historic with the contemporary and academic rigour with spectacular exhibition design to champion design and creativity in all its forms, advance cultural knowledge, and inspire makers, creators and innovators everywhere.”
Marie Antoinette Style will run from 20 September 2025 to 22 March 2026. Tickets will become available shortly.