London’s Victoria & Albert Museum will open a David Bowie archive in 2025 called The David Bowie Center for the Study of Performing Arts. Location is the newly built V&A East Storehouse in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The purchase of the estate and the establishment of the center were made possible thanks to a £10 million donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group.
Comprising more than 80,000 items, the archive traces Bowie’s creative processes as a musical innovator, cultural icon and champion of self-expression and reinvention from his early career in the 1960s to his death in 2016. It includes handwritten lyrics, letters, sheet music, original costumes, fashion, photographs, films, music videos, set designs, Bowie’s own instruments, album art and awards. The fashion fundus becomes stage costumes such as Bowie’s groundbreaking Ziggy Stardust ensembles designed by Freddie Burretti (1972), Kansai Yamamoto’s extravagant creations for the Aladdin Sane tour (1973) and the Union Jack coat designed by Bowie and Alexander McQueen for the album cover of Earthling (1997). The archive also includes personal writings, trains of thought and unrealized projects, most of which have never been seen publicly before.
In addition to establishing the new center, the donation will support the ongoing conservation and research of the archive.
The V&A East Storehouse aims to offer a novel museum experience conceived in and around the V&A’s collections. It will give visitors a behind-the-scenes look at a new purpose-built building housing more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 books and 1,000 archives.