David Bowie’s huge assortment of non-public gadgets — together with flamboyant Ziggy Stardust costumes, handwritten lyrics and the Stylophone utilized in “House Oddity” — has been donated to the UK’s Victoria and Albert Museum by the late rock artist’s property.
The V&A will showcase greater than 80,000 items, most of which have by no means been within the public area, at its new hub in east London from 2025. It declined to offer the worth of the archive.
The pioneering musician, whose concepts additionally influenced movie, artwork and style, was an inveterate collector of fabric referring to his artistic course of and output over six a long time. He died from most cancers in 2016.
Bowie’s archive consists of letters, set designs, hundreds of slides, contact sheets and transparencies from photographers akin to Terry O’Neill and Helmut Newton, in addition to costumes made by style designers Alexander McQueen and Kansai Yamamoto.
There are additionally “intimate notebooks” full of Bowie’s concepts, initiatives and musings, which the V&A mentioned would solid new mild on his artistic thought course of, in addition to “lower up” lyrics, an experimental means of songwriting launched to Bowie by the author William Burroughs.
Guitars, amps and different tools embrace Brian Eno’s synthesiser from Bowie’s 1977 album Low.
Kate Bailey, V&A senior curator for theatres and performances, mentioned it was “unprecedented” for a world artist to protect an archive on such a scale.
“He was maintaining and documenting his artistic course of, whether or not that was an album cowl, a tune lyric, a stage set or a glance . . . The truth that he had the imaginative and prescient to doc and archive it’s unbelievable,” she mentioned, including that Bowie was a lens via which to discover many cultural genres.
The trove of pop and rock historical past might be held and displayed in a newly created David Bowie Centre for the Research of Performing Arts at V&A East Storehouse in Stratford, east London, with gadgets frequently converted.
Because of open in 2025, the centre might be funded with £10mn donated by report label Warner Music Group, which owns Bowie’s songbook, and the Blavatnik Household Basis.
Bowie had a longstanding relationship with the V&A, permitting it entry to his results to stage a non permanent 2013 exhibition, David Bowie is, which turned one of many museum’s hottest exhibits, drawing 2mn folks throughout 12 worldwide venues.
Bailey mentioned the present had damaged new floor with its multimedia show. Guests heard completely different tracks by Bowie — delivered via German companion Sennheiser’s headphones — as they walked between rooms.
Bailey mentioned the V&A had but to develop an analogous method to displaying the archive, however added: “Within the spirit of Bowie, we’ll have to do one thing that can observe his creativity and imaginative and prescient.”
She mentioned detailed plans on the right way to show the gathering have been at an early stage however that the centre aimed to digitise objects and written paperwork as a part of its conservation work and to extend entry to the archive.
“His music is lasting. However once you begin to see the sense of the visible journeys he went on and his private analysis, that’s when it takes on this different sort of richness.”
