London’s Victoria and Albert Museum offers unprecedented access to its collections with the opening of V&A East Storehouse. This new site is part of East Bank, London’s sports and cultural quarter in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford. The new museum provides visitors with an opportunity to explore one of the world’s most significant museum collections in a new way.
NEW DESIGN
Designed by world-renowned architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, the V&A East Storehouse has four levels and covers 16,000sqm, an area larger than thirty basketball courts. It serves as both a working museum store and a visitor attraction, purpose-builtto house 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books, and nearly a thousand archives from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s vast collections.
IN FASHION
The collection covers five thousand years of creativity, showcasing a diverse range of objects, from Roman frescoes and Samurai swords to iconic fashion by designers such as Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood or Balenciaga. Visitors can also explore the Glastonbury Festival Archive, Elton John’s costumes, Mid-Century furniture, and even an iPhone.
SELF-GUIDED
A world-first in size, scale, and ambition, the V&A East Storehouse opened on 31 May 2025, offering a new kind of museum experience. It goes beyond traditional exhibitions, inviting visitors to see behind the scenes of a working museum store. Unlike in most museums, there are no glass cases separating visitors from the collections. Instead, a self-guided experience, live-feed screens and a glass overlook allow visitors to watch museum conservators at work and learn how objects are collected, preserved and displayed.
The Storehouse also introduces an Order an Object Service, which allows visitors to book a time to view any object up close. In addition, the museum offers daily Object Encounters, where experts and museum staff provide inspiring talks that highlight different aspects of the collection.
RICH HISTORY
Alongside interactive installations, the museum features over a hundred curated displays celebrating East London’s rich history of creativity, activism and craftsmanship. New acquisitions include works by fashion designer Imane Ayissi and other international artists.
A diverse programme of live events and creative workshops will run throughout the year, while special content from the David Bowie Archive will launch in September 2025.
The V&A East Storehouse is the first of two new V&A East sites. The second, V&A East Museum, will open in spring 2026 and focus on fashion, design, music and performance, with a strong emphasis on underrepresented voices and contemporary storytelling.
The victoria and albert museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) was founded in 1852 after the Great Exhibition of 1851, a major event that showcased art, design, and industry from around the world. Originally called the Museum of Manufactures, it was created in South Kensington, London, to inspire British artists and designers by displaying outstanding works. Later, it was renamed after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and expanded to include fashion, fine arts, and decorative objects. Over time, the V&A became the world’s leading museum of art, design, and performance, offering visitors a chance to explore five thousand years of creativity and craftsmanship. Today, the V&A is famed for its big name exhibitions and social caché, with celebrities attending lavishopening parties. Since 2017, its current director has been Tristram Hunt, a former Labour politician with a doctorate in Victorian History. Hunt has described the pressures of the job at a time when other institutions are caught up in debates on the repatriation of contested objects (like the British Museum), or cutting staff (like the Tate Museum.) In its attempts to open up its collections and tell new stories in new ways, the V&A has been hit by culture war controversies fuelled by the heated emotions of social media. This included the museum being criticised for describing former prime minister Margaret Thatcher as a “villain” alongside Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden in a display about British humour. The label had to be changed. |
