British indie band The Last Dinner Party and Chic’s Nile Rodgers are curating two exhibitions for the David Bowie Centre, the Victoria & Albert Museum has announced.
Plans for the centre, which opens in September and will feature over 90,000 of Bowie’s personal items and newly uncovered artefacts, were teased back in 2023.
On Friday (4 July), the museum revealed that two of the nine displays will be curated by The Last Dinner Party and Rodgers, who produced Bowie’s 1983 album Let’s Dance.
The band’s exhibition will consist of items from the 1970s that reflect how Bowie inspired The Last Dinner Party to “stand up for themselves and their music”.
Photos of the “Starman” singer taken by Mick Rock and the user manual for Bowie’s Electronic Music Studios synthesiser are among the items to have been selected by the baroque-pop group.
The Last Dinner Party were also given the chance to unbox iconic Bowie-related items in a video filmed for the V&A, such as the costumes for his Ziggy Stardust persona.
Speaking about the opportunity, the band said: “David Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists like us to stand up for ourselves. Bowie is a constance source of inspiration to us.”
They added: “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.”
Meanwhile, Rodgers selected items that speak to his and Bowie’s “shared love of the music that had both made and saved our lives”, said the musician and producer. These include a Peter Hall suit worn by Bowie for his 1983 Serious Moonlight tour.
“My creative life with David Bowie provided the greatest success of his incredible career, but our friendship was just as rewarding,” Rodgers said. “Our bond was built on a love of the music that had both made and saved our lives.”
The David Bowie Centre will be open daily from 13 September 2025.
