The David Bowie Centre opens at the V&A East Storehouse on September 13, 2025.
The David Bowie Centre opens at the V&A East Storehouse on September 13, 2025.
New details have been revealed about the David Bowie Centre, at the recently-opened V&A East Storehouse.
The David Bowie archive encompasses 90,000+ items.
Bookings to see 3D items from the David Bowie archive, including costumes, musical instruments, models, props and scenery, can be made through the V&A’s new seven-day-a-week Order an Object service. Visitors can book up to five items per visit at a time that suits them. Bookings require at least two weeks’ notice and Bowie items will begin to go live for advance booking from September.
The Centre will open with two guest curated displays, by Nile Rodgers and The Last Dinner Party
Nine rotating displays reveal aspects of Bowie’s extraordinary creative capacity, including ideas for projects that were never realised. Highlights include an idea to adapt George Orwell‘s 1984 and unrealised Young Americans and Diamond Dogs films.
Other displays explore Bowie’s creation of his Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane and look at his embrace of technology, futurism and science fiction, plus his 1987 Glass Spider tour and concert at the Berlin Wall. Others spotlight Bowie’s creative collaborators including Gail Ann Dorsey, and the creation of the 1975 Young Americans album, alongside his wide-spread creative influence and legacy.
Madeleine Haddon, Curator, V&A East said: “Bowie embodied a truly multi-disciplinary practice — musician, actor, writer, performer, and cultural icon — reflecting the way many young creatives today move fluidly across disciplines and reject singular definitions of identity or artistry. His fearless engagement with self-expression and performance has defined contemporary culture and resonates strongly with the values of authenticity, experimentation and freedom that we celebrate across the collections at V&A East Storehouse. This archive offers an extraordinary lens through which to examine broader questions of creativity, cultural change, and the social and historical moments during which Bowie lived and worked. In the Centre, we want you to get closer to Bowie, and his creative process than ever before. For Bowie fans and those coming to him for the first time, we hope the Centre can inspire the next generation of creatives.”
For more information on the David Bowie Centre and to sign-up for updates, please visit: vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/david-bowie-centre.
