Museum acquires Bowie’s archive, will put it on display
LONDON — From Major Tom to Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, the many faces and inspirations of David Bowie are getting a permanent home in London.
David Bowie performs during a concert on Set. 14, 1995, in Hartford, Conn.
Britain’s Victoria & Albert Museum announced Thursday that it has acquired Bowie’s archive of more than 80,000 items as a gift from the late musician’s estate. The trove of costumes, musical instruments, letters, lyrics, photos and more will be opened to the public at a new arts center dedicated to the chameleonlike pop icon.
The David Bowie Center for the Study of Performing Arts is due to open in 2025 as part of V&A East Storehouse, an offshoot of the U.K.’s national museum of art, design and performance that is being built in east London’s Olympic Park.
The V&A said the center will let fans and researchers gain insights into the creative process of Bowie, who died in 2016 at the age of 69.
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Kate Bailey, the museum’s senior curator of theater and performance, said the archive was an “extraordinary” record of a creator whose “life was art.”
A reflection of the costume that David Bowie wore as Ziggy Stardust on tour and during a performance of “Starman” on British pop music show “Top of The Pops” is photographed as part of a retrospective David Bowie exhibition on Mar. 20, 2013, at the V&A Museum in west London.
“Bowie’s a polymath, he’s multifaceted. He was inspired by all genres and disciplines,” she said. “He’s an artist who was working really in 360 — drawing from literature, but also drawing from art history … (and) the places that he’d been to.”
The musician — born plain old David Jones in