The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has opened its new facility, that gives visitors up-close, behind-the-scenes access to some of the museum’s more than 250,000 objects.
The groundbreaking new V&A East Storehouse is housed in a working storage facility for the world-renown museum. It allows the public a more engaging, hands-on experience when compared with traditional museum displays that involve roped-off areas and items and artefacts viewed from a distance.
Instead, it features open shelving where visitors can walk their own path through over 100 mini curated displays added to the ends and sides of the storage racking.
Housed in a expansive new four-story space (three accessible to public) designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, it opens as part of East Bank, the new cultural quarter in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
The highlight of the space is V&A’s radical new ‘Order an Object’ service, that means anyone can book to access any object, for free, seven-days-a-week.
At an appointed time, a member of the museum team will support your visit and show you how to safely interact with the objects ordered to view. Some objects are able to be handled wearing gloves, while others can only be viewed up close.
With only a small part of a museum’s archives on display at any one time, it gives easy access for those interested in a particular topic or item. The space will also hosts changing displays, events and workshops and there are free group sessions highlighting different objects in Storehouse.
The unique museum experience, described as a ‘hybrid, shared by staff and the public,’ is the result of 10 years of planning.
From Mid-Century furniture to ancient Egyptian shoes and Roman frescoes, an early 14th century Simone Martini painting, Leigh Bowery costumes, Althea McNish fabrics, vintage band t-shirts and performance posters, and avant-garde fashion and couture from Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, Comme des Garcons, Issey Miyake and Vivienne Westwood, there’s something to appeal to everyone.
The museum says the most-ordered object so far has been a 1954 Balenciaga evening dress.
Six large-scale objects also anchor the space, on display for the first time in decades. They 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 in Spain, and a full-scale 20th century Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.
Also on show the largest Picasso work in the world – a monumental Ballets Russes Le Train Bleu theatre stage cloth. At 10m high and 11m, the Picasso-signed stage cloth has been rarely seen since its debut in 1924. It is on display in the new David and Molly Lowell Borthwick Gallery of epic proportions, built to show the V&A’s striking collection of largescale textiles and theatre stage cloths on rotation.
A number of displays have been created in collaboration with young east Londoners.
V&A East Storehouse is open now.
