Jun 5

Jun 5 The V&A East Storehouse - a museum but not as you know it

Unless I’m away, I rarely go into a museum just to wander around. I’ll visit to see a specific exhibition and then maybe stop to admire some of the displays en route. The new V&A East Storehouse, though, isn’t like any museum you’ll ever have seen, and wandering round it (with your jaw well and truly dropped at every turn) is absolutely the only way to experience it.

The central atrium of the V&A East Storehouse, there’s a fourth floor below which you can see through the glass panels on the floor

Actually, calling East Storehouse a museum hardly seems apt. Designed to look like a warehouse, with a dazzling diversity of objects displayed on industrial shelving, the vast majority of them open to view rather than encased in glass, making them feel astonishingly accessible, this is a remarkable space which has been created for practical as well as public purposes.

As home to 250,000 of the more than 1.5 million objects that make up the V&A’s vast collection, East Storehouse has been conceived to house and display as many of them as possible from their art, design fashion and performance collections, along with custom designed studios for the museum’s brilliant conservators to not only do their vital work of assessing, repairing and treating the objects in their care, but, thrillingly, for visitors to be able watch them.

One of the conservation studios at the V&A East Storehouse

It’s hard to convey just how mind-boggling in scale and scope the East Storehouse is, or how eclectically selected the items initially appear to be, with historic pieces of furniture on show next to delicate ceramics, childrens’ toys alongside ancient sculptures, architectural wonders adjoining theatre costumes. But when you start reading the signs

How to navigate your way around the V&A East Storehouse

and scanning the QR codes on many of them for specific information about the objects, you understand better how and why they have been grouped and shown as they are.

Currently, there are sections that deal with the practical and ethical challenges of looted objects, a group of objects connected to religious and spiritual beliefs from around the globe, and a display from the V&A’s unique collection of everyday contemporary designs, each of which has won a Design Council Award.

Items which have won Design Council Awards over the years

These displays will change over time, but what you assume won’t are the larger installations which include the largest Picasso ever - the actual stage cloth, signed by the master himself, from ‘Le Train Bleu’ by the Ballets Russes in 1924, which has a room of its own

The stage cloth from Le Train Bleu copied from an original and signed by Picasso

and the intricate carved ceiling from a medieval Spanish palace - also with it’s own dedicated space

The carved ceiling from a medieval Spanish palace

And then there are two fantastic room sets - the office of retail magnate Edgar J Kaufmann, who commissioned the architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design the room for a Kaufmann department store, which is the only complete interior designed by Lloyd Wright on permanent display outside the USA.

and a kitchen designed by another architect - Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky - known as the Frankfurt Kitchen which revolutionised housework in the 1900s and which is filled with features that would work every bit as well in a modern day kitchen.

The design features of the Frankfurt Kitchen

As if all of this wasn’t exciting enough, the V&A East Storehouse has yet another unique offering. With its avowed dedication to fostering knowledge and understanding, the museum is giving visitors the chance to ‘order’ an object from the collection (up to five of them actually) which you will then be able to examine up close with a curator on hand to explain and show it to you. Items need to be ordered two weeks ahead, which is the only part of a trip to East Storehouse that needs any planning or organisation because this ground-breaking gem of a place is not only open every day, but it’s completely free.

Find out everything you need to know about visiting East Storehouse on THEIR WEBSITE and go, go, go!