The gift

As a child you know that opening your own present is better than buying someone else theirs; as an adult you know that the opposite is true. This life lesson came to mind on Tuesday when exploring (at last) the V&A East Storehouse, since it gives us a dizzying array of cultural treasures – many of which have been hidden for decades – whilst revealing the effort and thought that makes that possible. Both wrapping paper and contents I found fascinating.

The forced sale of Blythe House, the vast Edwardian office block in west London that acted as the Victoria & Albert Museum’s store, a growing trend amongst institutions to expose more of their collections and the need to continue fulfilment of the London 2012 legacy strand all came together at the Olympic park’s former media centre. In essence a vast, strong but open box, it was reconstructed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and the V&A curatorial team to become a secure warehouse for the storage of museum objects that is also open to the public. This has to be controlled access, obviously, and comes without the traditional presentation techniques, but it’s something of value and is rare in Britain (though not unique – the Science Museum group made great strides in that direction at Wroughton and York some time ago).

Here East as the location is known is still a little off the beaten track, requiring a bus trip from Stratford station on a drizzly weekday and a little walking around the houses to find the entrance. Once inside there is a workmanlike lobby area with the usual facilities and helpful staff to guide you, which is nice because you start by ascending a rather intimidating metal staircase that calls to mind a gallows.

None of this prepares you, thankfully, for the bright, expansive, triple-height atrium at the top of those stairs that is the heart of the building. The Weston Collections Hall has a milky glass roof giving highly diffuse light and is surrounded on all sides by endless racking, very unlike a V&A and much more akin to a B&Q. the shelves closest to the atrium are full of items of all descriptions and eras, whether furniture, armour, paintings, vases, sculptures and so on. Circulation through this repository for the arts, crafts and manufactures is via catwalks around the perimeter of this first floor and two further levels, which also allow access to side galleries of differing heights and limited forays – curtailed by gates and glass balustrades – into those storage areas. Whether full or awaiting occupancy, they stretch deep into the plan, recalling the Xanadu of Citizen Kane or the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

There are storeys of stories here, then, the overwhelming majority of which must remain hidden or only hinted at in a building that treads a delicate balance between fully-interpreted gallery and prosaic storage space.

The retail analogy is heightened by the display of items at the ends of each run of racking; they form a kind of museological offer of the week, carefully themed through a four-level stack (albeit the items on the ground floor are neither fully visible nor, annoyingly, included in the online guide). It is with these two dozen spots around the Hall that you can begin to orientate yourself – once over the initial shock, your eye and brain start to understand the curatorial logic that has informed the place. This involves mixing time periods and countries but being consistent as to theme, such that mediaeval Islamic ceramics might appear below Georgian lustreware and below contemporary Japanese bowls.

There is a parallel physical rationale, with the heaviest items on the lowest levels and regular shipments to the V&A’s more conventional outposts around the country well catered for. Conservation can be seen in action, too, though the inaction of deserted ground floor spaces carries its own charge. Objects will be rotated – frustratingly, the Picasso ballet backcloth for Le Train Bleu that featured heavily at last year’s opening has already been replaced in the tallest of those side galleries although Natalia Goncharova’s equivalent for The Firebird is impressively architectural. Thankfully Frank Lloyd Wright’s gorgeous wood-clad office interior for Edgar J. Kaufmann, who was also the client for his legendary house Fallingwater, remains. First installed at South Kensington in 1991, nearly two decades after being donated by Kaufmann’s son, it only lasted for a handful of years there before being removed and packed away again so let’s hope this installation persists. 

Importantly I was also struck by the level of wit and poignancy on show at the Storehouse. I can’t say whether this is intentional or accidental, but it’s there.

Thus a portrait bust of Sarah Siddons is firmly strapped down, as if the pioneering actress’s ‘star’ persona is too much even today; a battered ancient warrior is similarly restrained, preventing him from inflicting blows on his opponent. Elsewhere, a Christ-like figure in purest white marble bows his head, seemingly anticipating the bars of the cage in which he now finds himself confined. Two rows of dolls houses facing each other across an aisle inevitably look like two sides of the same street, whereas the pathetic remnants of noted Arts & Crafts architect C.R. Ashbee’s actual house, demolished in the Sixties, include front steps to nowhere, a key plate with no lock and a doorbell labelled "Do not ring unless an answer is required." And an oil of a theatrical scene-painting studio, itself committing a sleight-of-hand by depicting two backdrops that were in reality made years apart, seems to nod at the ‘reveal’ we ourselves are standing in as we walk around the Storehouse.

It was an absorbing visit, which I’d recommend. My photographs reflect those amusing ironies and in tone and mood are also a tribute to an atmospheric piece of photo-journalism I encountered many years ago about the historic Galerie de Zoologie in Paris that has always stayed with me.