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Professor Maurice Howard in one of the British Galleries rooms that he curated at the Victoria and Albert Museum

A 20-year creative collaboration between the Victoria and Albert Museum and art historians at the University of Sussex has been celebrated at a reception at the Museum in London. 

The Exchange enables curators and academics to exchange skills and knowledge. A V&A curator comes to Sussex each year for part of the week to teach while a member of the Art History faculty goes to the Museum to curate an exhibition or permanent gallery display, write for museum publications, or use their expertise to devise a new online resource. 

The exchange programme means that students can take courses based on collections and the curatorial expertise of one of the world's most important museums. In recent years, students have studied contemporary photography, Indian art and 1960s fashion with V&A curators, while more than a dozen Sussex graduates have gone on to work with the V&A, and others are now working at the National Portrait Gallery, London and Charleston. 

During the reception on 12 June, guests heard from Christopher Breward, Head of Research for the V&A, and from Maurice Howard, Professor of Art History at Sussex. 

Christopher Breward said: "The Exchange programme is really a very simple idea, allowing the intellectual exchange of ideas for the price of a train ticket. 

"V&A curators travelling to Sussex have used their time there to explore Asian art, sculpture and fashion and culture. And there is no more testing an audience of new ideas than a group of Sussex final-year students. 

"At the V&A, the British Galleries and Medieval and Renaissance and Modernist galleries have all benefited from Sussex expertise." 

Maurice said: "My time with the V&A has really taken really took my work forward in new and exciting ways. The Exchange scheme has also attracted attention from around the world, with museums in Los Angeles and Australia among those who want to find out how we do it." 

Guests at the reception were also invited to visit one of the V&A's current exhibitions, 'Baroque: Style in the Age of Magnificence'. The exhibition was curated by former University of Sussex art historian Professor Nigel Llewellyn, assisted by Art History research students Jane Eade and Elaine Tierney. Both students studied the V&A's Baroque exhibits for their AHRC-funded collaborative research doctorates.

University of Sussex art historians who have conducted original research based on the Museum's valuable collections include the following: 

• Professor Maurice Howard has had close involvement with two major projects in recent years. He assisted on the preparation of the Gallery of European Ornament and co-authored a book on the subject. Later, he worked for four years as Senior Subject Specialist for the Tudor and Stuart sections of the £30 million British Galleries, which explore British design and applied arts from 1500 to 1900 and opened to great acclaim in 2001. This major project involved curatorship, writing text to support the museum's publications and educational provision, and organising a major conference on the Tudor and Stuart interior. 
• Professor Liz James carried out research into the V&A's holdings of Byzantine material and curated an exhibition, 'Perceptions of Byzantium', within the Museum. 
• Dr Meaghan Clarke, a 19th-century specialist, devised the online catalogue of the Victorian portrait photographer Frederick Hollyer in 2003-04; this was the second of a series of projects to bring the Museum's photographic archive to a wider public. 
• Professor David Alan Mellor has curated several V&A photographic exhibitions, the last in 2002-03. David's long-established connections with the Museum date from as early as 1990, when he co-authored the book Recording Britain. Co-author and curator Gill Saunders, from the V&A, later came on the Sussex Exchange. 

Recent Exchange Fellows at Sussex from the V&A include Gregory Irvine, Senior Curator in the Asian Department, and Zoe Whitley, Curator of Contemporary Programmes. Dr Flora Dennis came to join Art History at Sussex in 2007 following a spell at the V&A co-curating the exhibition 'The Renaissance at Home'. She is now back at the V&A on the Exchange, planning new ventures.