V&A East Museum announces open date and first exhibitions

Image: Render showing ‘Crafting Stories’ section inside V&A East Museum’s Why We Make Galleries © JA_Projects for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Director of V&A East, Gus Casely Hayford, has been discussing the opening of the V&A's East Museum, which has been announced with a date for 18th April 2026.

The V&A East Museum, designed by architects O'Donnell + Tuomey, opens on East Bank in Queen Elizabeth Park next year and has been co-curated with young people, creatives as well as those living, working and studying in east London. In a brand new five storey space, the museum is next to the East Bank Partners London College of Fashion / UAL, the BBC, Sadler's Wells East and UCL East. Supported by the Mayor of London, V&A East Museum is sister site to the critically acclaimed V&A East Storehouse which opened in May this year.

A monumental new work by Thomas J Price, 'A Place Beyond', will welcome visitors into V&A East Museum on opening. There will also be a landmark exhibition 'The Music is Black: A British Story', with a sound experience by Sennheiser. The exhibition spanning 1900 to the present day reveals how Black British music has shaped British culture - and its global impact - to tell a long overdue story of Black excellence, struggle, resilience and joy.

Gus states::

“In today’s world where we’re facing down challenges from the climate crisis to increasing polarisation, museums and the creative industries have a vital role in bringing people together, celebrating communities, sparking conversations and spotlighting the many ways that global artists, designers and makers are using their creativity to change the world for the better.

“We have created V&A East Museum with and for our audiences, as a welcoming space for all, embedded in east London and with a global outlook, that reflects the multiculturalism of this incredible place that has been the beating heart of creativity for centuries. V&A East Museum is for you– my hope is you’ll find joy, something of yourself and a sense of belonging the moment you walk through the door.”  

Future Cities Forum interviewed Gus in January 2021 as part of its 'Cultural Cities' discussion event, looking at the two issues of how to provide sustainable cultural districts and how to make these relevant to communities with the societal changes that have occurred due to the pandemic.

Contributors to the forum included Jonathan Reekie, Director of the Somerset House Trust, Fred Pilbrow, Senior Founding Partner of Pilbrow & Partners, Lloyd Lee, Managing Partner of Yoo Capital and Duncan Wilson Chief Executive of Historic England.

Gus told Future Cities Forum:

'With a newly designed space which is vast - the scale of a football field - we will have a glorious new museum when built: There will be multiple floors where visitors can stand to look up and look out and 26,000 objects to explore. Those who are interested can look at best practice from designers around the world. There will be a newly designed state of the art exhibition space where the narratives from our creative communities can find space and present the reactions to the objects from the local community.

'We will draw in marginalised audiences and provide a digital interface which will bring the collections to life. Visitors will be able to record their impressions and leave something of themselves behind. We will create another layer of integration of objects - a space within itself - to seek out and explore the latest debates around the objects.

'There will be facilities for courses and for training. We have set up a connection with The Bartlett / UCL and The London College of Fashion for training and people will be able use this wider partnership to further their own professional opportunities, creating a new community of artists and by so doing, bring back into our own collections.'

Gus concluded our discussion event by saying

'We don't want to be passive as a museum in East London but engage, whether it be through tertiary education or via the national curriculum through physical or the digital, enabling people to access jobs or enjoy the museum through handling the objects. In short, the objects are 'Yours' and in the spirit of our founder Henry Cole, it is there to 'Fulfil your dreams'. Some of the collection is 'contentious and difficult' and we are motivated to live up to the higher ideas of museology but we want to change the way people see our collections, now and in the future'.