ONE of the UK’s best-loved museums is opening a huge new ‘cabinet of curiosities’ attraction next year.
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), will launch the V&A East Storehouse in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London, on May 31, 2025.
The venue will be packed full of more than half a million cultural treasures in various exhibitions planning four floors.
It will show off everything from Elton John’s costumes and retro football shirts, to vintage Glastonbury memorabilia.
It’ll also feature a huge new David Bowie exhibition, opening in September 2025, with more than 80,000 items from the star’s life.
As well as showcasing their objects, it will show visitors what happens behind the scenes in a museum – why and how they collect objects and how they look after them.
And you’ll be able to see conservators preserving items like clothing, paintings and puppets.
The purpose-built home will include more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books and 1,000 archives from the V&A’s collections
According to the new website: “Because the V&A’s collections span 5,000 years of human creativity, the team at Storehouse cares for everything from the pins used to secure a 17th century ruff to a two-storey section of a maisonette flat from the Robin Hood Gardens housing estate, demolished in 2017.
“The sheer scale of Storehouse means it is now possible to see other huge artefacts, including The Kaufmann Office (the only complete Frank Lloyd Wright interior outside of the US) and the spectacular 15th-century gilded wooden ceiling from the now-lost Torrijos Palace in Toledo, Spain.”
In a world-first, the centre will also offer an ‘Order an Object experience,’ which lets visitors book in advance to see a specific item up close, along with an experienced member of staff.
The Storehouse will open a short walk from the new V&A East Museum, which is scheduled to open in 2026.
According to the V&A website, the five-storey museum “will present major shows celebrating the leading artists, designers and performers of our time.”
Given its location in east London some of the galleries will pay homage to the area’s creative and manufacturing heritage, and it will also hold festivals, exhibitions, live performances and pop-ups.
Arty teens will love the Tate Modern on the South Bank – with its collection of modern and contemporary paintings, sculptures and large-scale installations from artists around the world, including Picasso and Matisse.
For the more traditional art lover, there’s the Tate Britain near Pimlico. It contains everything from Pre-Raphaelite paintings to artwork by David Hockney. And it has the largest collection of artworks by Turner.
Take a walk through Tower Hill to see the London Wall – visible remnants of the Roman wall that was built by the Romans in AD 200 around the port of Londinium. While not much of it is left now, this wall shaped what people thought of as London for around 1,000 years.
The Wallace Collection in Marylebone’s Manchester Square is an eye opener both for its stunning paintings, sculptures, ceramics, furniture and armour, as well the grand house they’re housed in – once the London home of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford.
Chose from more than 95,000 British films and television shows to watch for free at The BFI Southbank’s Mediatheque. Choose something to watch and a booth to sit in, and plug yourself in.
Track down the best places to see street art in London, including works by Banksy and the colourful Leake Street Arches. Depending on where you’re based there are a number of self-guided street art maps available online, and a number of free guided tours too.
