V&A East teases opening of David Bowie Centre – featuring an archive of more than 90,000 objects

Bowie in a recording studio in 1973. Photograph: Mick Rock

The newly opened V&A East Storehouse has announced the opening date of its David Bowie Centre – a permanent home for more than 90,000 pieces of memorabilia that make up the singer’s archive.

The Centre will welcome members of the public from 13 September, when it will host displays curated by renowned musician Nile Rodgers, who worked with Bowie, and award-winning indie band The Last Dinner Party.

Their selections will sit alongside other installations that explore Bowie’s legacy and influence.

Rodgers, who produced Bowie’s 1983 album Let’s Dance as well as 1993’s Black Tie White Noise, said: “My creative life with David Bowie provided the greatest success of his incredible career, but our friendship was just as rewarding.

“Our bond was built on a love of the music that had both made and saved our lives.”

Musician and guest curator Nile Rodgers. Photograph: Timothy Eliot Spurr for the Victoria and Albert Museum

Rodgers’ display includes a bespoke suit worn by Bowie during the tour for Let’s Dance, photographs of the album being recorded in New York, personal correspondence between the pair, and more.

The Last Dinner Party’s collection focuses on the 1970s, with objects that illustrate how Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists.

It features intimate photographs of Bowie in the recording studio, his elaborate handwritten lyrics for the song ‘Win’, and notes and set lists from the 1976 Station to Station tour.

The band also chose the user manual for Bowie’s Electronic Music Studios synthesiser. The so-called ‘suitcase synth’ was used on his Berlin trilogy of albums: Low, Heroes, and Lodger.

The Last Dinner Party members Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland, Abigail Morris, Aurora Nishevci and Emily Roberts said: “Bowie is a constant source of inspiration to us. When we first started developing ideas for the band, we took a similar approach to Bowie developing his Station to Station album – we had a notebook and would write words we wanted to associate with the band.

“It was such a thrill to explore Bowie’s archive, and see first-hand the process that went into his world-building and how he created a sense of community and belonging for those that felt like outcasts or alienated – something that’s really important to us in our work too.”

The V&A East curatorial team has plenty more in store for visitors, including nine rotating displays that reveal aspects of Bowie’s creativity.

These include ideas for projects that never came to fruition, such as an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 and the unrealised films Young Americans and Diamond Dogs.

The Storehouse sits at the Olympic Park, and the V&A consulted young adults from the four Olympic boroughs – Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest – for a special exhibit that shows off Bowie’s skill as an artist, including self-portraits, sketches, costumes, and designs.

Other displays explore the creation of Bowie’s iconic personas, such as Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, his embrace of technology, futurism and science fiction, and much more.

David Bowie’s paint palette. Image: courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum / The David Bowie Archive

V&A East curator Madeleine Haddon 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, visit vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/david-bowie-centre.