Permanent archive of David Bowie's work, with more than 90,000 items across nine rotating mini-displays, at the V&A East Storehouse.
The David Bowie Centre is now open at V&A East Storehouse, and it's a permanent home for David Bowie's archive. The whole thing sits inside the Study Centre at the Storehouse, which is the V&A's new working museum store in the Here East building. It's open to the public as the first phase of the museum's expansion into east London, so it's one of the first things you can actually visit there.
The archive itself is massive: more than 90,000 items spanning six decades. We're talking handwritten lyrics and sketches, costumes, instruments, and album artwork. Because it's so big, the centre doesn't show it all at once. Instead, it displays around 200 highlights at a time across nine rotating mini-displays, so what you see one visit will change by the next. It's a way of keeping the archive active rather than just locking it away in a basement.
And if you want to go deeper, there's a free 'Order an Object' service. You can book one-on-one time with the wider collection and see up to five items per visit, so you can get a proper look at things that aren't on the walls. Much of what's here preserves the personas Bowie built over the years, like Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, and the archive was made possible thanks to the David Bowie Estate and a donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group.
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It's at V&A East Storehouse, Parkes Street, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hackney Wick, London, E20 3AX. Tickets are £5.00, with concessions, and advance booking is recommended.
