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David Bowie was quite possibly the most interesting man who ever lived, and boy did he know it. Although conceivably we’d have called this behaviour ‘hoarding’ if he hadn’t become enormously famous and successful, the man kept basically everything associated with his career – from before it was clear he’d have one, right through to his very last weeks.
Bowie had something like 90,000 individual items stashed away in a private archive in the US. And then he donated the whole thing to the V&A, which took possession of it following its use in the blockbuster touring exhibition David Bowie Is… To be clear, the V&A’s brand new David Bowie Centre is not a permanent home for the David Bowie Is… It's an archive.
Most of us, I would venture, do not spend a massive amount of time hanging out in archives. To be honest I went along to the V&A Storehouse – the museum’s new permanent public archive in Stratford – a bit hazy on what it actually was and how this would all play out.
Opened to much fanfare back in May, the Storehouse is an enormously impressive building, like stepping into a fantastically reimagined version of the final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, floor upon floor of artfully arranged furniture, clothing and other paraphernalia from the V&A’s colossal collection on full public display.
The David Bowie Centre occupies a corner of the second floor and it does, in fact, include a small exhibition that gathers together some fascinating items. Of course there are clothes: the Earthling frock coat, a skimpy lil’ Ziggy number. But it’s the written stuff that really fascinates – a terse rejection letter from Apple Records; a somewhat bemused testimony to his hard-working nature from the then 19-year-old David Jones’s dad, presumably written for a prospective label.
Moreover, Bowie’s somewhat childish handwriting – finally something I have in common with him! – is everywhere. The man was an inveterate note taker and annotator and there is something incredibly intimate about seeing so many of his thoughts spaffed out on paper. He absolutely adored Post-it notes: they’re practically omnipresent and in a small section devoted to unrealised projects an entire hitherto unknown stage project called The Spectator – set in 18th century London – is sketched out on a series of them.
It’s a good little exhibition: a video wall plays his promo clips with the sound on (I’m led to believe this is not standard in archives) and it’s actually quite nice to see Bowie’s work presented thoughtfully but quite drily: the lack of self-conscious cool that pervaded David Bowie Is… means we can look on stuff like his drum and bass years in a detached, academic way and conclude that whatever you may think about the music, it was simply really interesting that Bowie got massively into DNB for a couple of years there.
David Bowie gave his stuff to the nation. It’s your stuff
The display cases are due to be rotated at various intervals: some two years, some six months. There’s also a guest-curated display, which to me felt like the only misstep. The initial curators are long-term Bowie collaborator Nile Rodgers, and indie band The Last Dinner Party. It’s not very clear who chose what in the display, and no disrespect to TLDP, but it seems odd that the guy who produced Let’s Dance has to share a relatively small amount of space with a band who were at school when Bowie died. Perhaps a bit of personal testimonial explaining the choices might have made this section pop a bit more.
Really, though, treating the Bowie Centre as an exhibition space is missing the point. Most of the archive is filed away. But you can request to see it, or up to five items from it via the Storehouse’s really quite cool Order an Object service (which you need to book in advance online here). The curators I spoke to felt very passionately about this: you don’t need to have a very good reason to look up Bowie’s stuff to do it. Because he gave it to the nation. So it’s your stuff. Yes, you could be researching a dissertation about him. But you could also just want to handle some of his Ziggy Stardust clogs, which I duly did (with protective gloves on).
Although nobody at the press view had specifically chosen any items, several tables were laid out mocking up the type of things somebody might ask for, from a selection of Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto’s iconic Ziggy-era costumes, to a selection of late stuff that includes the creepy notebook from the ‘Blackstar’ video and sketches Bowie made during rehearsals for the Lazarus musical less than three months before his death.
It feels a bit worthy to say that the David Bowie Centre is an incredible resource first and foremost. The exhibition is fun. But it is just extraordinary that you can now ask to look at basically any of the personal belongings of the actual David Bowie and they’ll just do it. Of course it’s heaven for Bowie fans, but he was so colossally influential in terms of everything from fashion to early adoption of the internet that it’s hard to imagine there aren’t five items for all of us here. He came and met us and now he’s gone – but David Bowie can still blow our minds.
The David Bowie Centre opens Sep 13 at the V&A East Storehouse. It will be open daily and free, but it will be ticketed and booking online is strongly advised.
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