Even for a cultural scene as lively as London’s, the arrival of a brand-new museum is a major event. Double the expectations when the institution in question is a new outpost for the V&A, whose blockbuster exhibitions (and 12-acre-strong permanent collection) in South Kensington are a bottomless well of inspiration to the capital’s creatives. The brand-new V&A East Museum – which opens in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park this weekend – has quite the legacy to live up to.
Nor has it been an easy path to the opening, adds the museum’s inaugural director, Gus Casely-Hayford. He recalls landing the job in the pandemic spring of 2020. “I was living in Washington DC, in a dream job: I was the director of one of the Smithsonian Museums. But there was something about the opportunity to create a new museum; to do it in east London, one of the most creative and dynamic areas of any city on earth – and also to work with the V&A.”
A few weeks after being offered the role, he flew home to London on the very last plane before lockdown. “Building a team and crafting a vision in that period of remote working was quite something. But it really focused the mind on how important museums are – how important culture can be – as a way of bringing us together.”
Approaching through the Olympic Park, the first thing you see is the building: a tapering beige stack that looks a little like a monumental cardboard box, folded and sliced into angular shapes. Its footprint isn’t huge: 7,000 square metres, only a tenth of the South Kensington mothership’s, and notably smaller than its neighbours on the East Bank cultural quarter. Nevertheless, Irish architects O'Donnell & Tuomey have carved out enough space for three galleries, a roof terrace, a creative studio, the all-important gift shop and a cafe. The latter is run by Marylebone’s “mixed-heritage” restaurant Jikoni, and is certain to become a destination in its own right.
Outside by the Waterworks River stands Thomas J Price’s eighteen-foot bronze statue of a young Black woman, titled A Place Beyond. Her steady gaze represents the museum’s aspirations, explains Casely-Hayford: “We wanted to be a place in which young people can cast their gaze up toward the horizon and dream.”
Indeed, inspiring young people – and giving them, as well as creatives and makers of east London, a place to be together – is a major part of the new museum’s mission. Even more so than the nearby V&A East Storehouse (which opened last May to house the institution’s vast archives), the V&A East Museum has been shaped by the local community.
“We have spoken to so many east Londoners,” says Casely-Hayford, “and collaborated with them in the making of this institution. More than 30,000 people were consulted over the process; I visited more than 100 schools. More than anything, it was to make them feel like this was a space that respected them.”
That effort is clearly perceptible in everything from the objects on display (the gallery opens with an eye-popping fuchsia dress by local designer Molly Goddard and a majestic portrait by Kehinde Wiley of Dalston resident Melissa Thompson) to the welcoming approach to security (no airport-style scanners or intrusive bag searches here). It’s also evident in the museum’s first temporary exhibition: a vital and vibrant survey of Black British music culture called The Music Is Black: A British Story.
The first two floors of galleries are free to enter, and devoted to Why We Make: a raid on the V&A archives for 500 disparate objects, yoked together under themes such as identity, health and activism. It’s a head-spinning visual remix – a Pinterest board come to life. Contemporary fashion magazines share a vitrine with a 19th century Daoist robe; Leigh Bowery costumes face off with designer furniture; an Elizabethan almanac and a Fitbit both offer comment on our age-old obsession with tracking our health. Upstairs, there’s a display curated by photographer Tom Hunter, who documented the Hackney squatting scene of the ’80s and ’90s. It’s a space to wander at will, with new inspiration catching your eye on every turn. You can imagine the students at the London College of Fashion next door making full use of it.
The building’s topmost gallery is for temporary exhibitions, something the V&A does better than most – and the first is an instant classic. The Music Is Black looks back on a century and more of Black British music, from the jazz age to garage, grime and drill. There are instruments: Joan Armatrading’s first guitar; the chunky samplers, synthesisers and decks used by DJs and producers from the house and D&B scenes. There are material artefacts like the original signs from the pioneering 4 Aces and Blue Note nightclubs. There’s also some spectacular fashion: archive stage outfits worn by Sade and Poly Styrene; a trilby loaned by The Specials’ Neville Staple; even the Banksy-designed stab-proof vest worn by Stormzy for his Glastonbury headline set in 2019.
Bringing it all to life is the soundtrack, which shifts and fades in your smart headphones as you move around the show. A sonic tapestry weaving together everything from choral hymns to My Boy Lollipop and The Specials to Skepta, it syncs with videos and photos showing jazz clubs, reggae concerts and house parties, as well as police raids and protests. There’s no shying away here from the violence and oppression – slavery, colonialism, racism, over-policing – of the Black diaspora experience. But if anything, the darkness makes the music sound even more gloriously alive.
One object that will stay with me is the school uniform worn by DJ Target, Bow grime pioneer and early Rinse FM DJ. Presented alongside designer outfits worn by icons like Little Simz and Skunk Anansie’s Skin, it made me think of the thousands of east London schoolkids who might find something to be inspired by in this show – and in the whole museum. All of us are lucky that this place has landed on our doorstep. But for some, it could prove life-changing.
V&A East Museum opens Saturday April 18 at 107 Carpenters Rd, E20 2AR.
