This weekend, London gains a new heavyweight cultural pillar as the V&A East Museum opens its doors to the public. The latest big-name building to land in Stratford’s newly christened East Bank hub following Sadler’s Wells East and the V&A Storehouse, it comes with a hefty investment from the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and tips the East Bank over the £600 million threshold as a whole: a statement flag planted in the Stratford soil towards making the area a competitive destination for the arts.
The new museum’s aim is not just to replicate its famous South Kensington forebear, but to carve out a particularly east London identity for the space, with local creatives and young people involved in shaping its direction from the beginning. Two permanent free galleries entitled Why We Make showcase an array of objects from the typically historic (Renaissance paintings and Japanese incense boxes) to the notably modern, with designer Molly Goddard’s pink tulle dress, made famous by Jodie Comer in Killing Eve, given prime placing.
Talking to The London Standard at the opening of the site on Tuesday evening, the Mayor spoke of the importance of making the V&A East an accessible and youth-facing space. “I felt quite intimidated as a young boy, born and raised in south London, going to South Kensington,” he said. “It was quite scary going into the Natural History Museum or the V&A. I didn’t feel like it belonged to me. But this is very different — it’s about making people feel welcome and getting younger people coming. If you can get the bug early and feel like art is for you and culture is for you, that’s something you can enjoy and sustain for the rest of your life.”
A Dizzee, Stormzy ride
Reflecting on his original pledges when running for the position back in 2016, Khan underlined his aim to give Stratford and east London a concrete cultural “legacy” via these new openings — which also include an outpost of the London College of Fashion and University College London, with a new BBC HQ set to open later this year. “The Olympics was great, but it came and went and, when you speak to Eastenders, they’d say it was like a spaceship that landed and disappeared,” he said. “The East End deserves a proper legacy and [with] all the institutions here, the deal was you’ve got to give something back to this community.”
The first paid exhibition at the V&A East Museum is The Music is Black, a landmark deep dive into the contributions of black British music, tracing its history over the past 125 years. It’s a choice that purposefully speaks to the area. “It’s really important for that story to be told in this part of London, so Londoners who are black themselves can see the great contribution made by their forefathers and foremothers,” said Khan. Outside the building on its opening night, there were teenagers already curious to see what’s inside; it’s immediately heartening to overhear a group of young people talking about how they can get a ticket to see the art.
There’s plenty in the exhibition, put together by the V&A’s Curator of Africa and Diaspora: Performance Jacqueline Springer, that will appeal to a younger demographic too. Walking people through the ages, from the first ever stringed instruments and the idea of music as resistance in the age of colonialism, to modern titans of the black British arts such as Dizzee Rascal, Stormzy and Little Simz, The Music is Black naturally picks up steam as it moves towards the present day. A potted history of black artists from around the globe — from an all-too-small corner dedicated to Big Mama Thornton and the birth of American rock’n’roll to a room celebrating reggae in Jamaica — attempts to condense centuries of history into a digestible format, but it’s when the UK ups its ante around the 1970s that the exhibition starts to pop.
A tsunami of musical creativity
From there, the sheer volume of genres created and popularised by black artists — lovers rock, 2 Tone, drum’n’bass, jungle, trip hop, UK garage, grime — emerges like a tidal wave. It’s an overwhelming amount of cultural gravitas to distil into a few rooms; really, any one of these scenes would be deserving of its own focus. But there’s something to be said for seeing such a greatest hits set of artefacts, one after the other: Shirley Bassey’s golden Bond dress; Pauline Black from The Selector’s dapper drainpipe suit; Joan Armatrading’s handwritten chords to Love and Affection; Stormzy’s iconic Banksy-painted stab-proof vest from his 2019 Glastonbury headline. JME’s childhood Nintendo set-up is a sweet look at the kid who became a star, while a selection of photos from the first ever Notting Hill Carnival are a reminder of the seeds that shaped a London institution.
Though there’s far too much information to fit in the space, leading to a few slightly confused groupings that lump Nadine Benjamin, one of Britain’s first black sopranos, in with Sugababes, The Music is Black feels like the right exhibition to launch this new space. It’s modern and welcoming; it says what V&A East is all about. “There’s been big challenges in the city over the past 10 years with Brexit and the pandemic, but we’re investing in new things, which is really important,” said Khan. “Great cities, like great sports teams, don’t stand still because then you go backwards. You’ve got to plan for the future and this is a good example of us putting our money where our mouth is.”
