(AGENPARL) – Thu 17 July 2025 From guest-curated displays to unrealised
projects, the V&A announces new details on
the David Bowie Centre – opening at V&A
East Storehouse on 13 September 2025
FRIDAY 4 JULY 2025
A new home for David Bowie’s archive – V&A East Storehouse’s David Bowie
Centre – gets visitors closer to Bowie’s creative process and legacy than ever
before
Nine displays include unrealised projects and newly uncovered revelations,
plus, visitors can book one-on-one time with items from the archive
Award-winning musician, producer, songwriter and David Bowie collaborator
Nile Rodgers and Brit Award-winning indie rock band The Last Dinner Party
guest curate a display
Access to the David Bowie Centre is free and ticketed, with tickets released
here later in the year
The David Bowie archive was acquired by the V&A through the generosity of the
David Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, and Warner Music
Group
Today, the V&A announces its David Bowie Centre, opening 13 September 2025 at
V&A East Storehouse, will feature an exclusive guest-curated display by multi awardwinning musician, producer, songwriter and David Bowie-collaborator, Nile Rodgers,
and Brit Award-winning indie rock band, The Last Dinner Party. These intimate
selections from Bowie’s archive offer new perspectives on one of the most iconic
creatives of all time and sit alongside a series of other mini curated displays and
installations exploring Bowie’s creative legacy and lasting influence.
Visitors to the David Bowie Centre, the new free-to-access working store and
permanent home for David Bowie’s archive, can also book one-on-one time with their
own selections from the 90,000+ items in his archive.
The David Bowie archive was acquired by the V&A through the generosity of the David
Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group. It joins
over 1,000 archives from creative luminaries including Vivien Leigh, the House of
Worth, and The Glastonbury Festival Archive.
Nile Rodgers, who produced Bowie’s hugely successful single and 1983 album, Let’s
Dance, as well as 1993’s Black Tie White Noise, has written, produced, and performed
on records that have sold more than 750 million albums and 100 million singles
worldwide. He has curated items reflecting what he calls his and Bowie’s shared ‘love of
the music that had both made and saved our lives.’ His selections include:
• A bespoke Peter Hall suit worn by Bowie during the Serious Moonlight tour for
the Let’s Dance album
• Chuck Pulin photographs of Bowie, Rodgers and guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan
recording Let’s Dance in New York
• Personal correspondence between Bowie and Rodgers about the 1993 Black Tie
White Noise album
• Peter Gabriel images of the recording sessions with backing vocalists Fonzi
Thorton, Tawatha Agee, Curtis King Jr, Denis Collins, Brenda White-King, Maryl
Epps, Frank Simms, George Simms, David Spinner, Lamya Al-Mughiery and
Connie Petruk recording Black Tie White Noise.
Nile Rodgers, 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.”
The Last Dinner Party is a Brit award-winning band, whose electrifying performance
style draws inspiration from their shared love for Bowie. They have selected objects
mostly from the 1970s that illustrate how Bowie continues to inspire generations of
artists to ‘stand up for themselves and their music’ and ‘steal and reinterpret’ to create
something unique. Their selection includes:
• Mick Rock photos showing Bowie in intimate recording studio moments
• Bowie’s elaborate handwritten lyrics for ‘Win’ from the 1974 album Young
Americans
• Writings and set lists for the Station to Station tour, aka Isolar – 1976 Tour
• Bowie’s Electronic Music Studios (EMS) synthesiser user manual. The ‘suitcase
synth’ was used on the albums Low, Heroes and Lodger, the so-called ‘Berlin’
trilogy.
WATCH The Last Dinner Party on Bowie’s influences and their new discoveries:

Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland, Abigail Morris, Aurora Nishevci and Emily
Roberts of The Last Dinner Party, said: “David Bowie continues to inspire generations
of artists like us to stand up for ourselves. Bowie is a constant source of inspiration to us.
When we first started developing ideas for TLDP, 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.”
Curated displays
The V&A East curatorial team consulted with 18–25-year-olds from the four Olympic
Boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest through London
Legacy Development Corporation and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’s Elevate Youth
Voice. The resulting displays delve into various elements of Bowie’s archive and
creative legacy, encompassing everything from private photographs to handwritten
lyrics, self-portraits, his own artist’s palette, sketches, costumes, and designs.
Nine rotating displays reveal aspects of Bowie’s extraordinary creative capacity,
including ideas for projects that were never realised. Highlights include an idea to adapt
George Orwell’s 1984 and unrealised Young Americans and Diamond Dogs films.
Other displays explore Bowie’s creation of his iconic personas including Ziggy Stardust
and Aladdin Sane and look at his embrace of technology, futurism and science fiction,
plus his legendary 1987 Glass Spider tour and concert at the Berlin Wall. Others
spotlight Bowie’s creative collaborators including Gail Ann Dorsey, and the creation of
the 1975 Young Americans album, alongside his wide-spread creative influence and
legacy.
Madeleine Haddon, Curator, V&A East said: “Bowie embodied a truly multidisciplinary 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. Made possible through the generosity of the David Bowie Estate,
the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group, 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,
please visit: vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/david-bowie-centre.
-ENDSFor further PRESS information about V&A East Storehouse and the David Bowie
A selection of press images is available to download free of charge from
pressimages.vam.ac.uk.
What to expect in the David Bowie Centre
As well as a new visitor experience, first and foremost, the David Bowie Centre is a
working archive and store for Bowie’s paper-based archive with reading and study
rooms. The Centre is brought to life with a series of small, curated areas including a new
film showcasing a selection of performances from across Bowie’s career, and an
interactive installation tracing the wide-spread impact of Bowie on popular culture
from the sit-com Friends to Issey Miyake fashion and musicians from Lady Gaga, Charli
XCX, Janelle Monae, and Kendrick Lamar. A series of rotating mini displays exploring
different themes and elements of the archive shows approximately 200 items at one
time. A central space for facilitated object handling and exploring facsimile topic boxes
also includes overhead rails of hanging Tyvek bags storing some of Bowie’s most iconic
fashion and costume. These range from Freddie Burretti’s Ziggy Stardust looks to
Agnes b’s Heathen ensembles, and Bowie’s 1992 Thierry Mugler wedding suit. These
costumes can be ordered for closer looking as part of one-on-one appointments using
the V&A’s Order an Object service.
The David Bowie Centre is part of V&A East Storehouse at East Bank in Queen
Elizabeth Olympic Park. Access to the David Bowie Centre is free and ticketed, with
tickets released closer to opening.
About the David Bowie archive
The David Bowie archive encompasses 90,000+ items tracing Bowie’s creative
processes as an innovator, cultural icon, and advocate for self-expression and
reinvention. Items range from 414 costumes and accessories to a series of set models,
nearly 150 musical instruments, amps, and other sound equipment, 187 awards, as
well as life masks, framed art, merchandise including tour t-shirts, posters, Bowie’s
own desk, props and scenery for concerts, film and theatre. Paper-based material
includes notebooks, diaries, lyrics, scripts, correspondence, project files, writings,