MANY MUSEUMS INCLUDING London’s Victoria and Albert (‘V&A’) own far more items than they have room to display them. The objects for which there is no gallery space to display them usually lie hidden away in museums’ storerooms. Following the example of a museum in Rotterdam, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the V&A has created an open access storeroom, where members of the public can see many of the objects that were formerly hidden away from view in the museum’s old warehouses.

V&A East Storehouse, which was designed by the American studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, opened its doors to public visitors on 31 May 2025. It is in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park near East London’s Stratford Station and West Ham’s football stadium.   We had to queue for about 20 minutes before gaining admittance on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It was well worth waiting to see this incredible creation.

The parts of the Storehouse which are open to the public are arranged on three floors. The upper two are on galleries that overlook the lowest floor. Stepping into this edifice is rather like entering a huge B&Q or Ikea warehouse filled with shelving. However, there the similarity ends. The shelves are covered with an amazing variety of artefacts, ranging from ancient to modern times, and sourced from all over the world. There is also a viewing platform that allows visitors to watch the museum’s conservators working. Another room houses only one exhibit: an enormous backdrop that Picasso painted for the 1924 performance of the ballet, “Le Train Bleu”. It measures 10.4 by 11 metres, and is the artist’s largest known painting.

Without going into much detail, it seems that whoever arranged the artefacts in the Storehouse had a great sense of humour. For example, a twentieth century chair is placed right next to a rococo chest of drawers, and a fragment from a mediaeval church is placed immediately above an early example of a television. Few of the artefacts are labelled apart from bearing their museum inventory numbers. Dotted around this contemporary Aladdin’s Cave of cultural treasures, there are several exhibits with labels that explain various aspects of running the V&A and its curatorial philosophy.

With good transport connections to central London, there is no excuse not to visit the city’s latest fascinating cultural experience: the V&A Storehouse.