"Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history

Kavita Puri on a groundbreaking museum initiative by the V&A

Two women lean over a white table, looking at a pair of wooden shoes with stilt-like soles

Published: July 30, 2025 at 9:00 AM

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Museums are magical places. They are the keepers of so many histories and stories from near and far. However, there’s a large part of every museum that most people never see. Behind the scenes lies another world: one of conservation, upkeep, research and the moving around of collections, perhaps for an exhibition or to loan to another museum. But what if you could walk around those areas in which objects are stored and restored? What if you could hold the object that you wanted to study or observe up close?

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That’s now possible in the new V&A East Storehouse in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. This huge space spanning four levels is home to some 250,000 objects and 350,000 books from the museum’s collection. Its 1,000 archives document a diverse array of subjects, including the Glastonbury Festival and the world of theatre and performance.

Dotted throughout the building are 100 mini-displays on topics ranging from resistance movements to the artistry of east London, charting how and why items are collected and preserved, and outlining the latest scholarship on their stories. They also explore the ways in which archives and collections are part of creative expression and understanding, and how we describe and contextualise the past. The workings of museum practice are made transparent here.

As a trustee of the V&A, I have been watching this remarkable and ambitious project unfold across recent years. I’ve admired the extraordinary care taken in all aspects of the process, from the moving and installation of objects to consideration of how the visitor experience can be enhanced.

The first object moved into the V&A East Storehouse was a very large installation. It’s a significant example of brutalism: a two-storey section of a maisonette from Robin Hood Gardens. This housing estate in Poplar, east London, was completed in 1972 and demolished from 2017 as part of the redevelopment of the area. Now viewable from different angles and heights, the maisonette is sure to provoke further debate about urbanism and the interplay between people and architecture.

The last object to be brought to the site, meanwhile, was an 11-metre-wide backdrop by Pablo Picasso for the 1924 Ballets Russes production Le Train Bleu. It’s rarely been seen before because of its huge size (and the fact that it weighs 350kg!), but a special gallery has been built in the Storehouse to exhibit large textiles and stage exhibits such as this magnificent example.

There are many other significant objects displayed here that will catch your breath. You can stand under the vast, late 15th-century Torrijos Ceiling, taken from the Palacio de Altamira near Toledo in Spain, and gaze up in wonder at its carved and gilded designs that nod to Islamic artistic tradition. And you can admire the marble arches of the Agra Colonnade, built in India in the mid-17th century, during the Mughal period.

Possibly the Storehouse’s most pioneering innovation, though, is its Order an Object service. Anyone can book a one-to-one encounter with an item from the collection, whether it’s an ancient Egyptian shoe, a costume by performance artist Leigh Bowery, a Japanese tea ceremony set, or a print by the pioneering designer Althea McNish.

This concept is a world first. To be able to experience the materiality of an object – to touch or see it close up, previously possible only for museum practitioners – is a game changer. It will shift the relationship between the audience and the collection, and it’s hoped that it will also inspire creativity and encourage new questions. With the museum practice opened up for all to see, to witness, even to hold, this offers an entirely new way to be part of the magic.

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This column was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

Authors

Kavita Puri

Kavita Puri is a journalist, author and broadcaster. A new edition of her book Partition Voices: Untold British Stories, marking the 75th anniversary of partition, is out now, published by Bloomsbury

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