V&A Storehouse opened a working collection to public view
The east London site offers access to museum objects alongside the work of caring for them.
News report
V&A East Storehouse opened to the public on May 31, 2025, in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. The project turned part of the former 2012 Olympics Media Centre into a purpose-built home for collections and a place where visitors could see a working museum.
The V&A describes the site as holding more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books and about 1,000 archives. Its purpose extends beyond presenting a conventional sequence of finished exhibitions: storage, research and the care of collections are part of the experience.
The central Weston Collections Hall stretches across three levels, with smaller curated displays inserted into the storage racks. The museum’s account describes themes ranging from east London’s creative history to conservation research and the reasons objects enter a public collection.
The opening formed the first stage of the wider V&A East project. A museum-sector account published in June 2025 confirmed that Storehouse had opened on May 31, while describing the separate East Museum as a later development. The two venues therefore have different opening dates and functions.
Storehouse’s lasting change is greater public access to material ordinarily associated with museum storage and study. The building provides a setting in which a visitor can consider an object’s history and the practical decisions involved in looking after it. It also shows how an existing large building can be adapted to combine collection infrastructure with public use.
