V & A acquires ultimate piece of art (7)
I believe the answer is:
against
'v' is the definition.
(v means versus in sports fixtures)
'a acquires ultimate piece of art' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'a' is present in the answer.
'acquires' could be 'gains' (gaining is a kind of acquiring) and 'gains' is present in the answer.
A single letter 't' remains which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for against that I've seen before include "Facing" , "Versus - in contact with" , "In disagreement with" , "Con" , "Not in favour of" .)