LONDON — A vast trove of David Bowie’s material has opened to the public this week at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new David Bowie Centre, giving fans and researchers access to some 90,000 items from the musician’s estate.
The V&A East storehouse, which houses the centre, will allow visitors to view and, in many cases under supervision, handle artifacts ranging from stage outfits and instruments to handwritten notes, letters and everyday memorabilia. The centre opens to the public Saturday and appointments are free through the museum’s booking system.
Curators say the collection sheds light on both Bowie the performer and Bowie the prolific idea generator. Among the documents on display are handwritten notes for a never-made film titled "Young Americans," a project in which the fictional astronaut Major Tom would be sent to "a disgruntled America," curator Madeleine Haddon said at a preview. Another unfinished project, "The Spectator," was a stage musical Bowie worked on shortly before his death that examined an 18th-century London outlaw and "the relationship between art and politics in London at the cusp of modernity," Haddon said.
The archive contains about 400 costumes, including Kansai Yamamoto’s knitted jumpsuit associated with Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona and a distressed frock coat created with British designer Alexander McQueen for Bowie’s 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in 1997. V&A archivist Sabrina Offord said the McQueen pieces and some Ziggy costumes have proved particularly popular in booking requests.
Objects on display join everyday artifacts that trace Bowie’s life and work: musical instruments such as a stringed Japanese koto and Ziggy Stardust’s acoustic guitar; letters and lyric drafts; to-do lists and sticky notes filled with ideas; the key to the Berlin apartment Bowie shared with Iggy Pop in the 1970s; and a Rarotonga driver’s license from the time he filmed the 1983 movie "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence." The archive also preserves items sent by fans, including drawings, paintings and a handmade music box.
The museum selected about 200 items for the archive’s main room in consultation with local 18- to 25-year-olds as part of a project to involve young people who initially had varied awareness of Bowie’s work. "Many didn’t know who he was or they had a lot of questions about why the V&A wanted to build an entire center dedicated to him," Haddon said. "By the end, they were convinced."
The material offers a rounded view of Bowie’s career and influence. Born David Jones in the London suburbs in 1947, Bowie adopted multiple personae and moved through musical styles that included glam rock, soul and electronica, and he collaborated with British jungle and drum-and-bass musicians such as A Guy Called Gerald and Goldie. He also acted onstage and in films, painted, embraced technology through ventures such as his 1990s internet service provider BowieNet, and pursued numerous creative projects that never reached completion.
The archive juxtaposes items that underscore Bowie’s rise with reminders of the obstacles he faced. On display is a letter from his father, Haywood Stenton Jones, seeking a job for his son when Bowie was a struggling teenager, and a brief 1968 rejection from The Beatles’ Apple Records that read, "Apple Records is not interested in signing David Bowie. The reason is we don’t feel he’s what we’re looking for at the moment."
The David Bowie Centre occupies part of the V&A East Storehouse, a hybrid warehouse-museum opened in June in east London’s Olympic Park. The museum said it intends the collection to inspire creativity and new research, enabling visitors to make connections between Bowie’s work and contemporary discussions. Curators emphasized that while some items are iconic, others reveal the quotidian details of a life spent inventing new artistic directions.
Bowie died in January 2016 at age 69. Nearly a decade later, his work continues to influence music, fashion and popular culture, and the V&A’s opening makes a broad and intimate range of material available for public study and appreciation.