‘There’s Nothing to Hide’: Tim Reeve on the V&A East Storehouse

In 2015, the Victoria and Albert Museum faced a storage problem. The west London facility at Blythe House that held the majority of its collection was being sold off by the government, meaning that more than 600,000 books and objects needed a new home. Rather than move them further out of sight, the institution made the bold decision to open the re-housed collections to the public. The result is V&A East Storehouse – a new museum experience, designed by architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, which opens its shelves and archive boxes to the public this week. George Kafka spoke with the V&A’s deputy director, Tim Reeve, to learn more.

George Kafka Why is now the right time to open the V&A’s collection stores to the public?

Tim Reeve At the V&A, we’re always conscious that our collection is distinct. It’s like a sourcebook that is meant to be accessible to the public and to inspire creative practice. That’s our founding mission. 

The new East Storehouse is the result of a classic case of necessity meeting opportunity. The sale of our previous storage facility at Blythe House felt like an existential moment, but we quickly moved past seeing it as a problem and began to realize we could do something incredible. Rather than shift the collection from one safe, inaccessible facility to another, we could do something radical. 

At the same time, we weren’t blind to the fact that people are increasingly sceptical, even verging on cynical, about national institutions and whether they truly serve the public. That was an additional motivation for us.

GK Could you elaborate further on that?

TR National organizations, museums and cultural institutions are often seen as exclusive environments where only the tip of the collection iceberg is visible. I think that can make the public feel sceptical about, or somewhat disengaged from, collections such as ours, which are simply held in trust. The more you open up the collection – the more you make it physically and intellectually transparent – the better. 

As you walk around East Storehouse, even the areas you can’t directly access are visible and open. We’ve deliberately leaned into that idea and, through Diller Scofidio & Renfro’s realization of that vision, fully embraced it. 

Research tells us that the local, east London audience is not typically museum-going and often feels excluded from that part of public life. Creating something like this in their own backyard – something so different and new – I hope will not only change the nature of the V&A, but also serve as a call-to-arms for museums more broadly to think radically and to stop hiding behind traditional boundaries.

GK There’s been significant discussion in recent years about the provenance of museum objects, which is especially pertinent in the UK considering the country’s colonial history. Do you see addressing this as part of the remit of curatorial transparency within the East Storehouse project?

TR One of the big themes we want to explore here is the story behind the V&A collection: being completely transparent about what we have, why we have it, where it came from and including perspectives that aren’t just V&A-driven or research-led.

This is an important continuation of the leadership the V&A has already demonstrated in this area. We understand that some parts of our collection are more contested than others. We’re not shying away from that. We’ll share our perspective, but we also want to hear what you think.

GK On a more practical note: How on earth do you move a museum collection across London? 

TR Moving the collection was truly an extraordinary logistical undertaking, for which I can take no credit. The collection is enormous, with objects of all different shapes and sizes – from large pieces of furniture to tiny poison arrows and everything in between. The actual process – packing up at Blythe House, driving across London and unpacking – took 12 months from start to finish. 

GK There’s a reason why storage facilities aren’t typically accessible to the public: they’re usually just full of utilitarian shelves and drawers. Is the offering here at East Storehouse intended to give visitors a glimpse into how museums work? 

TR The V&A has such depth and breadth in its collection – there really is something for everyone. East Storehouse is host to 1,000 archives of various shapes and sizes. The David Bowie Centre [a new home for the musician’s archive, opening to the public in September] will be one of the stars of the show, but we also have Eduardo Paolozzi’s Krazy Kat Arkive of 20th century popular culture, the Biba Archive, the Glastonbury Festival Archive, and many other resources.

For me – and I think for many visitors as well – the real magic of an institution like ours happens behind the scenes. It’s the preparation for the exhibitions you visit or the new galleries you explore. It’s almost like a laboratory – a place of constant innovation. The full scope of that will be revealed here. 

GK What is the curated experience like? How will visitors encounter the objects?

TR The first thing to note is that museumgoers will be surrounded by the collection for the entire duration of their visit to East Storehouse. We expect the experience to be a 60- to 90-minute, self-guided exploration. It’s unmoderated, allowing visitors to go wherever they like. Around the collection hall, we’ve installed 100 mini-displays – literally ‘hacked’ into the ends and sides of the storage racking – which offer a cross-section of the V&A collection. Visitors will be able to stand in the hall, look around and gain a strong sense of every type of material represented in the V&A collection.

The displays are also lightly curated around three themes. One is ‘Collecting Stories’ – understanding what we have in the collection, why we’ve collected it and unpacking that for visitors. The second theme is the V&A as a working museum, so many of the displays will focus on what we do as an organization. The third draws from our collection as a unique source of inspiration. It isn’t about showing works by Leonardo da Vinci or Vincent van Gogh. Rather, the collection is curated to inspire the artists and designers of tomorrow. 

GK East Storehouse is located only a short distance from V&A East Museum, which is opening next year. Do you envisage a particularly close relationship between the two?

TR We see them as part of a unified vision. V&A East comprises both the Museum and the Storehouse, and that’s significant in a practical sense: they were developed as a single business proposition. We couldn’t do one without the other; it was always a case of doing both or neither. 

The proximity of the two sites allows visitors to experience both the front-of-house and back-of-house aspects in a single day – offering a 360-degree view of a modern museum. 

GK Could you highlight some of the key features of the space?

TR Well, East Storehouse occupies around 16,000 square metres of a large, industrial shed – essentially a warehouse – in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Hackney. It was originally built as the broadcast media centre for the London 2012 Summer Olympics. Within about a year after the Games, it was transformed into Here East, a kind of campus for tech and innovation. 

Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s response to our brief for the space went beyond our wildest dreams. It’s a dramatic design that I believe will genuinely surprise visitors. On the one hand, I want them to feel completely welcome here. On the other hand, I love the idea that, as they move through the space, they can’t quite believe they’re allowed to access all these areas that would ordinarily be off-limits to the public. 

GK So, for you, the key architectural feature is the central hall. Are there others? 

TR Yes. One is the avenue – the gradual reveal – leading into the collection hall. Rather than creating a big entrance, the design allows the building to simply be itself, guiding visitors through various stages.

The second is what the architects described as ‘clearings’, although we now refer to them as gallery spaces. It’s as if they have randomly excavated a pre-existing storage facility to create the collection hall and its tributaries – the semi-public spaces branching off from it.

GK How will the space be programmed going forward? 

TR On Saturday 7 June, we’re hosting a specially curated live event, ‘back2back: Archival Bodies’, which will take over all three publicly accessible floors with installations, DJ sets, live performances and unique experiences exploring themes of intimacy, care and trust. It’s presented in collaboration with playbody – a creative collective and architectural design studio – and will reimagine East Storehouse as a playground through installation, sound, performance and spatial intervention.

On 26 June, Turner Prize-winning artist Jasleen Kaur will join us to kick off our new series ‘A Life in the Work of Others’, in which artists, designers and creatives share their journeys and the work of others that has inspired them along the way.

We’ll also be launching a new talks series called ‘How We Made It’, spotlighting a single creative project. The first event, on 17 July, will feature the experiential art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast.

‘Look What I Found’ is our new micro-residency programme, which offers artists the opportunity to spend four days researching the collection, before presenting their findings at a public drop-in session. East London–based transdisciplinary artist Adam Moore will be our first micro-resident, with his ‘show-and-tell’ event scheduled for 12 July.

However, the core programme during the opening days will focus on our ‘Order an Object’ service. This won’t strictly be limited to those with appointments, since the public will be party to serendipitous meetings with collection items as they are moved through the space.

GK People can use the ‘Order an Object’ service to request to see a specific item up close for a time?

TR Yes. The service is open to everyone – whether you’re an established practitioner or a student living down the road doing art history GCSE, you can go to the ‘Order an Object’ portal and schedule an appointment to see any item held at East Storehouse. The sessions are supervised, but the objects will be available for close examination for up to four hours. The idea is to provide equal access for all by transforming capacity. At Blythe House, we only had about 3,000 appointments a year. In the initial phase here, we expect to offer around 25,000 appointments annually, with the aim of expanding over time. We’re anticipating welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to V&A East Storehouse. 

V&A East Storehouse will open at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London from 31 May

^{Main image: Mesh roll-out storage racking at V&A East Storehouse (detail). Courtesy: V&A, London; photograph: Hufton + Crow}