The new V&A museum coming to Stratford

The V&A East Storehouse, next door to Stratford Cross at Stratford’s East Bank will create a “super access public collection store” as the V&A moves more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books, and 1,000 archives to its 16,000 sq m purpose built home. Offering a completely new museum experience that will take visitors on a time journey, using ever changing displays and self guided tours, the V&A Storehouse will explore why things are collected, examine their care, conservation and display and showcase the latest research. Workshops, performances, pop-up displays and screenings will also be seen alongside live encounters with the museum’s work.  

This unique space will allow the V&A the opportunity to showcase room sets and large architectural fragments that were, until now, too challenging to permanently display. Among these are interior design and architectural marvels such as the 15th century gilded, carved wooden ceiling of the lost Torridos Palace in Spain, or the only complete Frank Lloyd Wright interior outside of the US, a stunning, cypress-paneled 1930's office created for American businessman and philanthropist Edgar J. Kaufmann. 

Visitors will also be able to see treasures from the V&A’s Art, Design and Theatre and Performance Archives that include the archives of the Talawa Theatre Group as well as Glastonbury. Finally, for lovers of David Bowie there will be a dedicated space for the museum’s 80,000 items from letters and lyrics to costumes and stage designs which will be housed in The David Bowie Centre for Study of Performing Arts. 

Opening also in 2025, the five-storey V&A East Museum will, over 7,000 sq m, offer spectacular views across the Stratford Waterfront, with space for major exhibitions, installations, live performances, festivals, commissions, socialising, pop ups, a studio and late-night events.

The new museum’s main exhibition hall will celebrate the leading artists, designers and performers of our time with two collection galleries exploring global making.  Here, as well as collection displays, new acquisitions, commissions and live activations there will be a  spotlight on stories of Stratford and East London, demonstrating the heritage of local creativity and manufacturing with stories of local creatives and makers past and present.

In the galleries there is a focus on the twenty-first century with a “thematic framework exploring attitudes and agendas for making in the twenty-first century”. Textiles will feature heavily in its displays, from ground breaking textile designers past and present, for example, East London’s 18th-century Spitalfields pioneer Anna Maria Garthwaite, to fashion garments that will showcase world-renowned designers such as Eileen Gray, Althea McNish, Asha Sarabhai, Dame Vivienne Westwood, and Rei Kawakubo.  

And there’s so much more to the development of East Bank London. As well as the new V&A, Stratford is, or will soon be, home to some of our largest cultural institutions, including the BBC’s Music Studios, the London College of Fashion, and Sadler’s Wells Theatre, opening in 2024.  Bringing an estimated 2,500 new jobs to the area, this will firmly establish East Bank London as the city’s new cultural heart.

Want to discover how easy it is to get to Stratford and what else you can do when you get there? Visit https://www.stratfordcross.co.uk/explore/. You can also download the Stratford Cross app and catch up with all things Stratford! The app is available on the App Store and the Google Play Store.