Everything's beautiful at new V&A show

Staff have installed the centrepiece of a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The aluminium cast of Eros, symbol of the Evening Standard and which draws millions of tourists to Piccadilly Circus every year, is to feature in an exhibition on the "aesthetic movement".

The original Eros was created in the 1890s as a monument to Victorian philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury by sculptor Alfred Gilbert. The exhibition, which opens on Saturday, explores "the cult of beauty" as promoted by Oscar Wilde and artists William Morris and Gabriel Dante Rossetti. The show, The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, is the first to examine fully the aesthetic movement and is the next in the V&A's series on important movements. It will guide visitors through the last four decades of the 19th century when many writers, artists and designers believed in living life as beautifully as possible.