{"id":118,"date":"2025-06-03T10:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T09:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/?p=118"},"modified":"2025-06-03T10:09:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T09:09:35","slug":"the-storage-museum-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/03\/the-storage-museum-london\/","title":{"rendered":"The V and A East Store House Opens – A Hommage To Storage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At artPAKK many of our clients use our industry leading bags to not just transport their artworks but to store them as well. Designed by experts and used by professionals, our artPAKKs are engineered to keep your artwork safe during storage. And it is storage that we turn to in this article as we look at the incredible new V&A East Storehouse<\/a> which brings cherished objects previously in storage on display for the first time in many cases, changing the way that the public and institutions view storage facilities and the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every object tells a story\u2014and at the new V\\&A East Storehouse, stories aren\u2019t just preserved, they\u2019re made visible. Part of East Bank\u2019s \u00a31.1 billion Olympic legacy project, this striking new cultural institution in East London is no ordinary museum. Conceived as a hybrid between archive, display space, and working laboratory, the Storehouse houses 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and 1,000 archives from the V\\&A\u2019s expansive holdings\u2014many of which are being made publicly accessible for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Born from necessity, the Storehouse emerged after the UK government announced plans to sell Blythe House, the previous long-term storage facility. Faced with the relocation of hundreds of thousands of objects\u2014including monumental items like the 500-year-old Torrijos ceiling\u2014the V\\&A seized the opportunity to do something unprecedented. \u201cYou don\u2019t move a collection of this size and scale very often,\u201d explains Tim Reeve, deputy director and COO of the V\\&A. \u201cIt made us think that we had to go as big and be as ambitious as we could.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is a museum turned inside out. Visitors begin their journey in the building\u2019s hollowed core, designed to evoke both theatricality and transparency. The space is flooded with light\u2014thanks to one of the world\u2019s largest Barrisol ceilings\u2014setting the tone for a museum that lets the public behind the scenes. As Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro puts it, \u201cThe further out you move, the less accessible it becomes.\u201d Here, the boundaries between front-of-house and back-of-house are deliberately blurred, giving visitors a sense of intimate trespass into the V\\&A\u2019s curatorial and conservation processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Far from simply warehousing culture, the Storehouse invites self-guided exploration through more than 100 curated mini-displays embedded directly into the storage systems. Thematic highlights such as *Collecting Stories*, *Sourcebook for Design*, and *The Working Museum* uncover treasures like embroidered samplers stitched by Hackney schoolgirls in the 17th century and a Stratford music hall program from the 1890s. East London\u2019s own creative pulse is celebrated through commissions by artists such as Jasleen Kaur, Xanthe Somers, Rahemur Rahman, and Imane Ayissi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

A standout feature of the Storehouse is the *Order an Object* service\u2014radically open and entirely free. Visitors can go online to request any item from the collection for viewing, any day of the week. Whether it’s Leigh Bowery\u2019s flamboyant costumes, a Lucie Rie ceramic, or furniture from the Memphis Group, the experience puts curatorial power into the hands of the public. For those who prefer chance over choice, *Object Encounters* offer daily pop-up presentations by the collections team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even monumental works like the Torrijos ceiling\u2014a Spanish Mudejar masterpiece originally crafted for a 15th-century palace\u2014have been transported and installed with extraordinary precision and care. Once kept in crates for decades, the ceiling now greets visitors upon arrival, its interlocking arches suspended by chain hoists in a dramatic reinstallation effort that underscores the museum\u2019s theatrical sensibility and technical prowess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Monocle noted in its exclusive behind-the-scenes look, V\\&A East Storehouse isn\u2019t just demystifying curatorial practice\u2014it\u2019s redefining what a museum can be. It\u2019s a place where every object, from the monumental to the mundane, is a protagonist in a story of design, culture, and reinvention. With collaborators like Artpakk helping to embed sustainable practices into its very structure, the Storehouse offers a bold new blueprint for cultural institutions around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a firm background in both the artworld and in logistics, the team at artPAKK are excited to visit the museum and see not just the beautiful objects on display but a new way of thinking about preserving and storing them. For more information on our sustainable art packing solutions<\/a> and to register for your trade account, contact info@artpakk.com<\/a> or call +44 (0)1245 95 69 17. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At artPAKK many of our clients use our industry leading bags to not just transport their artworks but to store them as well. Designed by experts and used by professionals, our artPAKKs are engineered to keep your artwork safe during storage. And it is storage that we turn to in this article as we look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artpakk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}