The Shock of Medievalism

In 1996 the V&A announced that a competition to design an extension to the museum had been won by Daniel Libeskind, an architect based in Berlin. The architect has described his design as an “exploding spiral”; Kathleen Biddick writes admiringly here of the “multiple historical and counterhistorical relations that Libeskind brings to crisis”. William Rees‐Mogg evidently considers the extension “an insult to everything the museum stands for”.

Kathleen Biddick is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame. She invites the reader to see the seven scholarly essays that make up...