Enjoy this article?
Most Museums Journal content is only available to members. Join the MA to get full access to the latest thinking and trends from across the sector, case studies and best practice advice.
V&A to create David Bowie centre after acquiring archive
Venue dedicated to the English singer songwriter will be established in east London
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is to create a centre dedicated to David Bowie following the acquisition of the English singer-songwriter’s archive.
The archive features about 80,000 items spanning six decades of the career of Bowie, who died in 2016. From 2025, the archive will be made available to the public through the creation of the David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts at V&A East Storehouse, in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
The acquisition and creation of the centre has been made possible thanks to the David Bowie Estate and a £10m donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group. Alongside the creation of the new centre, the gift will support the ongoing conservation, research, and study of the archive.
Tristram Hunt, the director of the V&A, said: “Bowie’s radical innovations across music, theatre, film, fashion, and style – from Berlin to Tokyo to London – continue to influence design and visual culture and inspire creatives from Janelle Monáe to Lady Gaga to Tilda Swinton and Raf Simons. Our new collections centre, V&A East Storehouse, is the ideal place to put Bowie’s work in dialogue with the V&A’s collection spanning 5,000 years of art, design, and performance.”
The archive includes handwritten lyrics, letters, sheet music, original costumes, fashion, photography, film, music videos, set designs, Bowie’s own instruments, album artwork and awards. It also includes more intimate writings, thought processes and unrealised projects, the majority of which have never been seen in public before.
Highlights include stage costumes such as Bowie’s breakthrough Ziggy Stardust ensembles designed by Freddie Burretti (1972), Kansai Yamamoto’s flamboyant creations for the Aladdin Sane tour (1973) and the Union Jack coat designed by Bowie and Alexander McQueen for the Earthling album cover (1997).
The David Bowie Archive joins the V&A’s theatre and performance collections, which includes the archives of influential individuals and organisations, from Vivien Leigh to Peter Brook, Akram Khan Dance Company, the Royal Court Theatre and Glastonbury Festival.
The acquisition follows the V&A’s 2013 exhibition, David Bowie Is…, which marked the first time a museum had been given unprecedented access to the Bowie archive. The exhibition was seen by more than two million people around the world as part of its international tour, becoming one of the V&A’s most popular exhibitions of all time.