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<\/p>\nTim Reeve, the deputy director and chief operating officer of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, likens the long-awaited V&A East Storehouse\u2014a vast new open-access working store due to open 31 May\u2014to a retail experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think of V&A East Storehouse as a working museum building\u2014a logistics centre for our collections and archives\u2014and, uniquely, also a large-scale self-guided cultural experience, then you could say it shares some of the characteristics and browsability of the Ikea shopping experience,\u201d he says. The aim of the project is to break down physical barriers and remove glass cases so visitors can get closer than ever before to their national collections.<\/p>\n
Based at the 2012 Olympics site in Stratford, east London, the depot holds more than 250,000 objects and 1,000 archives (the V&A collection includes around 2.8 million objects in total). Spanning four levels and 16,000 sq. m, the new space, housed in part of the former Olympics Media Centre, is designed by the architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. It will be admission-free and open daily.<\/p>\n
A site visit reveals the space\u2019s operations will be underpinned by a flexible \u201ckit of parts\u201d that enables objects to come on and off display more easily. The V&A says visitors will be able to access all objects via an Order an Object\u00a0service.<\/p>\n
Reeve says the architectural brief was to design the \u201cpublic network\u201d, and the positioning of objects around visitors\u2019 self-guided routes, to be as flexible and responsive as possible, reflecting the fact that items will be constantly moved around. \u201cIn that sense, everything on the public network at V&A East Storehouse should be read as provision, as a work in progress,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
Order an object<\/p>\n
This may require a new mindset from a public used to seeing objects presented on plinths rather than pallets. \u201cOrder an Object is a new service for a museum, and, as with any innovation, we can\u2019t be certain that we\u2019ll get it right first time. My biggest fear is that we may not be able to meet demand!\u201d Reeve says.<\/p>\n
At a press briefing held today, he adds: “We\u2019re preparing to be busy. We know how many slots there are; we assume all those slots will be taken over a period of time. I would imagine that we will sell out of 25,000 appointment slots over a 12-month period. Then we\u2019ll review and appraise.”<\/p>\n
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Order an Object appointment at V&A East Storehouse<\/p>\n
Photo by Bet Bettencourt<\/p>\n
The seven-day-a-week service will have a new online booking system. \u201cIt will not be so different from booking a table at a restaurant, cinema tickets or a squash court, allowing anyone to book up to five objects relating to whatever creative pursuit they\u2019re working on two weeks ahead of time,\u201d Reeve says.<\/p>\n
Other institutions that have embraced open access storage include the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, which launched its Depot space in 2021, claiming \u201cyou can see the entire collection [154,000 works]\u201d in it.<\/p>\n
Reeve cites other museum storage centres around the world which promise visible or accessible storage, typically for booked research visits and educational groups. They include the Luce Centers\u00a0in the US at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and New York\u2019s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre. \u201cBut these are experiences moderated by glass, and\u00a0often with limited and complicated access,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
The V&A\u2019s new facility will fuel debate about how and why museums continue to collect\u2014with some directors advocating \u201cdegrowth\u201d, questioning whether collection enlargement is sustainable in the long term. The British Museum owns at least eight million objects, with roughly 80,000 of them on public display at the Bloomsbury institution at any one time\u20141% of the collection. At London\u2019s National Gallery, around 38% of the 2,600-work collection will be on display following an extensive bicentenary rehang this month.<\/p>\n
Size and success<\/p>\n
The Tate\u2019s director, Maria Balshaw, considers how and why museums should be expanding in her recent book, Gathering of Strangers. \u201cThe power and influence of a museum is not dictated by size,\u201d she writes. \u201cWhat I want to do is challenge the assumption that the measure of a museum\u2019s success is when it doubles in size or opens a new outpost.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether V&A East Storehouse is the way forward in terms of collection management will be tested over time, but Reeve acknowledges that storage and display space \u201cis finite and increasingly expensive\u201d. This challenge should be met by finding new ways in which non-display collections can be more equitably accessed, he argues.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the nearby V&A East Museum is due to open in spring 2026, with both projects working together as two cultural destinations connected by the theme of \u201cmaking\u201d, Reeve says.<\/p>\n
Together, the twin projects represent the largest UK museum development scheme for decades. Total costs are expected to exceed those of the British Museum\u2019s \u00a3100m Great Court project, which opened in 2000. Reeve does not confirm the total cost for the V&A East Storehouse but says the UK\u2019s Department for Culture, Media and Sport is the principal funder, with a \u00a350m grant. Additional support came from the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Foyle Foundation and the French tech entrepreneur Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Jousset.<\/p>\n
“The budget is not completely blown. I feel good about that especially when you think about losing two years [in the schedule] because of the pandemic. Importantly, we have stuck to the original vision for the Storehouse\u2014we could have scaled back,” Reeve says.<\/p>\n
V&A East Storehouse has been set a visitor target, although the figure remains confidential. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to know what the demand will be for an experience that doesn\u2019t really have a comparator, and in any case visitor numbers aren\u2019t the only measure of success,\u201d Reeve says. But for V&A East Storehouse to be successful, it needs to be well used by east Londoners, he stresses. \u201cOne day, I would like to see a future director of V&A East inspired to enter the world of museums through a visit to V&A East Storehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n
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A 15th-century palace ceiling is one of six built-in objects at the depot<\/p>\n
\u00a9 V&A<\/p>\n
Six of the biggest Displays<\/p>\n
Built into the structure of the V&A East Storehouse will be six large-scale dramatic objects, some of which have not been displayed for decades. They include the Agra Colonnade from India (1637), a Frankfurt Kitchen by the Austrian designer Margarete Sch\u00fctte-Lihotzky (1926), a section of the exterior fa\u00e7ade of the demolished Robin Hood Gardens council estate in east London (1972), and a\u00a0Ballets Russes\u00a0theatre stage cloth (1924).<\/p>\n
Another large object is Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s Kaufmann office (1937), originally installed in a Pittsburgh department store. \u201cThe office comprises more than 240 pieces of plywood, which tends to delaminate over time, and so the focus of practical conservation work was on the consolidation of the delicate layers of wood veneer,\u201d says Holly Harris, senior project manager at the V&A East Storehouse.<\/p>\n
The final large object is a 15th-century marquetry Torrijos ceiling from the now destroyed Altamira Palace near Toledo, Spain.<\/p>\n