Heroic display
We had hoped to see this exhibition/display before we went to the USA, but a glitch-ridden encounter with the V&A on-line booking system denied us that opportunity. The V&A tried to mollify us with a “take your pick” offer ahead of the next booking block, and we picked this Friday lunchtime slot.
The new V&A East Storehouse is an archive with some capacity for public displays, rather than an exhibition space in the style of the main V&A. While visitors are free to wander around the archive space and look at some artefacts up close…
…the “house rules” are very much archive rather than exhibition rules. All property, even flasks of water, must be left behind in lockers before entering the main area. This felt quite onerous to us – not least needing to do without water while we were inside but also 60% of the lockers were located either too high for us to reach or so low that more senior people might struggle to get down to that level. Naturally the middle-level lockers were all in use.
The David Bowie display is a fairly small area, somewhat akin to an exhibition but clearly oriented towards the fact that this is a Bowie archive that has been donated to the V&A.
After the Bowie, we had a look around the rest of the place – well why not?
The QR code system enabling us to look up items and sections was effective – both in the Bowie and (even more usefully) around the general archive.
Then, after all we’d bin through…
…a visit to the Cafe Garden next door for some coffee and a snack before heading home.
I can see the benefit of this new V&A archive for real design afficionados. But for fair weather design-istas like ourselves, I expect that visit to the V&A East Storehouse was a one-off.
If you’d like to see all of our pictures from that day…and who wouldn’t?…click here or the picture link below for our Flickr album:
