V&A East Storehouse to pioneer Order an Object service for visitors

The V&A East Storehouse will create a “new paradigm for access to national collections” when it opens next year, the venue’s strategic lead, Tim Reeve, has said.

The new storage warehouse in east London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will open on 31 May 2025, with its much-anticipated David Bowie Centre following on 13 September that year (see box below).

The first of two new Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) sites opening soon in east London – the other being the V&A East Museum – the storehouse will house more than 250,000 objects and 1,000 archives.

Speaking at an event this week to announce the opening date, Reeve said: “V&A East Storehouse is committed to delivering a unique museum experience, which opens up the V&A collection for everyone.”

He added: “We have developed a compelling and ambitious vision of how a contemporary museum can connect its collections and knowledge, and crucially, the opportunity they were assembled to provide, with the talented, young and creative people of East London, the UK, and of course, far beyond.”

Public access is at the heart of the project; in addition to an extensive self-guided visitor experience, the new venue will introduce a “world-first” Order an Object facility, whereby anyone can book to see any object they like seven days a week.

“We've been thinking carefully about how we house objects,” said V&A East’s director of collections care and access, Kate Parsons. “Our Order an Object experience means that anyone can book online to see any part of any object in this building, which is world leading.

“It means that they can do that seven days a week at the time of their choosing, and we are going to enable that access and make sure that it is safe, it's easy, it's equitable and it's meaningful to people.

“To do that, we've had to invest in systems,” she added. “We've had to invest in people. We've been making decisions around judgments about care and management of our collections to make that happen, and it really is transformational in terms of the access that people will get.”

Members of the public will also be able to view more than 100 curated mini-displays and see museum staff at work behind-the-scenes in the stores.

The venue will host a changing programme of live events, including performances based around the collections, as well as creative activities across two studios and two workshop spaces.

There will also be spaces where passers-by will be welcome to relax and socialise.

Co-production has been another major part of the project; The director of V&A East, Gus Casely-Hayford, said that rooting the two new sites deeply within the local east London community would be vital to their success.

“This is an area which is just so creative,” he said. “You feel it, you feel that buzz. I've had the great privilege of getting out into lots of the schools in the four boroughs that surround our two sites, and you see young people who absolutely could, in a generation's time, be leading aspects of the creative industries.”

Casely-Hayford said the area had been deprived of support for creative opportunities.

“[I’ve been] going into schools and seeing great teachers, but without the kind of facilities or the support to really transform the sorts of opportunities of young people in the ways that they would like,” he said.  

“And we want to be on their side, they absolutely deserve it – we want to create the spaces, the opportunities. We want to create a space that they can come into and feel welcome, but also this incredible source book, this amazing collection that belongs to all of us.”

Senior curator Georgia Haseldine said the new space “won’t look like a museum”.

“Objects are not going to be displayed beautifully on the plinth like you might see in an exhibition,” she said. “Instead, they're going to be on pallets. You'll find a pack of some shoes that will be nestled into some tissue paper, you might see Alexander McQueen dress, but it's going to be wrapped in a material that keeps out light.

“All of these things are there not just as a sort of strange theatre – they're about trying to preserve these objects for future access, and to mean that we get them into the study room as quick as possible for people to research.

“The whole of the curatorial vision is underpinned with this idea that you as a visitor will be able to explore, make connections, enjoy things within our collection that might be unanticipated, things you wouldn't know were here, but also that you can then access them. You can become a researcher yourself and come see them in our studios.”

The storehouse is located a short walk away from the V&A East Museum, which has not yet announced an opening date.

V&A East Storehouse

Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with support from Austin-Smith:Lord, the storehouse spans 16,000m2 across four levels of storage, which radiate outwards from the central Weston Collections Hall. The storehouse is located in the former London 2012 Olympics Media and Broadcast Centre, now known as Here East.

The collections housed in the store include the Glastonbury Festival Archive, PJ Harvey and Elton John’s costumes, vintage football shirts, Dior and Schiaparelli haute couture, Roman frescos, Samurai swords, Mid-Century furniture and the iPhone.

In the collections hall, visitors will be able to see six large-scale objects, many of which have not been on display for decades due to their size. Following conservation work, these include the 1930s Kaufmann Office – the only complete Frank Lloyd Wright interior outside of the US, a 15th-century carved and gilded wooden ceiling from the now lost Torrijos Palace near Toledo in Spain, and a full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century.

The construction project had to be planned meticulously around the requirements of the collections. Some of the largest objects, such as the architectural fragment of a building from the Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar, East London, were installed mid-construction, with the rest of the facility then built around them.

The storage facilities have been designed to be flexible and dynamic, featuring a “kit of parts” system that means objects can come on and off display more quickly and frequently, along with small touches such as magnetic signage that can be moved easily.

The state-of-the-art equipment in the storehouse will enable staff to do things that would have previously been impossible, such as unrolling large textiles for advanced, high-resolution imaging – all of which the public will be able to watch as it happens.

 

David Bowie Centre

Located within the storehouse, the David Bowie Centre will be home to David Bowie’s archive, which is made up of over 90,000 objects. “Within this centre, we will trace David Bowie as an innovator, as a cultural icon, and as an advocate for self expression and reinvention,” said Madeleine Haddon, who is leading on the curation of the centre.

“There will be three spaces where you can experience different ways of interacting with and accessing the archive – there’ll be displays that trace the narratives of David Bowie’s multi-dimensional creative personalities and vision and making. There’ll be audiovisual installations where you can experience interviews and music and music videos. And there will also be a space to explore the archive on your own.”

The archive ranges from musical instruments to costume ensembles to notebooks and handwritten lyrics.

“It gives you an opportunity to get closer to David Bowie than ever before,” she said. “Within the displays, we will have ones that rotate that are curated by us as a curatorial team, but we’ll also be inviting guest curators to come in, ranging from Bowie’s collaborators to young creatives, and also our V&A youth collective, so that we’re really continuing to learn and grow the archive, like the rest of storehouse, with young people in mind and what they are connecting to about David Bowie.”

Young people are a key target audience for the centre, said Haddon. “People I are often surprised when I say this – young people these days often don’t know who David Bowie is. They’ve maybe heard of a few songs, but they don’t really understand his cultural legacy or the ways that we see his impact, especially amongst popular culture today, and it’s been really exciting to go on that journey with them.”