V&A Opens Degrees of Disruption, a Vera Molnar Display
The free South Kensington show runs from 1960s computer drawings to Matt DesLauriers' Meridian, two editions of which just entered the museum's collection.
- When
- Oct. 16, 2026 to May 30, 2027
- Where
- V&A South Kensington, Rooms 88A and 90, London
- Cost
- Free, no booking required
Vera Molnar's Interruptions, a 1969 plotter drawing of short black strokes turned at random across a square grid, with patches where the lines drop out, is among the works in Degrees of Disruption: Vera Molnar and Generative Art. The free display opened Oct. 16 at V&A South Kensington in London and runs through May 30, 2027.
The V&A says the display gathers more than 50 works by Molnar and contemporary practitioners, tracing how Molnar's early computer work connects to digital art now. Other Molnar works include (Des)Ordres, a 1974 plotter drawing of nested squares. The curator, Melanie Lenz, gives an online talk for V&A members on Oct. 20.
Contemporary works include Casey Reas's MicroImage (2002), Licia He's plotter painting I'm Saying I'll Have to Check In (2023) and William Mapan's Sketchbook A #64 (2023). The museum has also acquired two editions of Matt DesLauriers' Meridian, given by the artist as inkjet prints, and one is on view, according to Vetro Editions, which published the Meridian book. Meridian is a 2021 Art Blocks series of 1,000 tokens, each drawn by a JavaScript program that builds stratified landforms out of hundreds of thousands of strokes.
Molnar was born in Budapest in 1924, moved to Paris in 1947 and co-founded the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel around 1960. Molnar ran simple algorithms by hand on grid paper from 1959 and first used a computer in 1968. Molnar died in 2023, aged 99. DesLauriers, who is based in London, cites Molnar as an influence.
For more reading, see Digital Meetup: Systems at Play Brings Free Creative Coding to the V&A, DesLauriers' notes on Meridian and the V&A's history of its computer art collection.
From left: Vera Molnar, (Des)Ordres, 1974; Matt DesLauriers, Meridian #870 and Meridian #686, 2021, printed 2026. Courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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