A Tour of the New David Bowie Archive Featuring 90,000 Artifacts from His Life & Career

With the tenth anniver­sary of David Bowie’s death com­ing up ear­ly next year, more than a few fans will have their minds on a pil­grim­age to mark the occa­sion. Per­haps with that very time frame in mind, the V&A East Store­house in Lon­don has just opened the David Bowie Cen­ter. Run by the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, to which Bowie left an archive of about 90,000 of his pos­ses­sions, this new insti­tu­tion will show a few hun­dred of those arti­facts at a time, and even make a range of them avail­able on request to vis­i­tors. As for what exact­ly is in there, Jes­si­ca the Muse­um Guide makes a brief sur­vey of the Bowieana cur­rent­ly on dis­play in the video above.

Some of the fea­tured objects, like the suits Bowie wore in his videos for “Life on Mars?” and “Let’s Dance” or the crys­tal ball he held aloft as Jareth the Gob­lin King in Labyrinth, may well be rec­og­niz­able even to casu­al Bowie appre­ci­a­tors. Longer-term fans will sure­ly rec­og­nize the out­landish but ele­gant Kan­sai Yamamo­to-designed cos­tumes that visu­al­ly defined per­son­ae like Zig­gy Star­dust and Aladdin Sane, the Alexan­der McQueen-designed Union Jack frock from the cov­er of Earth­ling, and per­haps even the met­al angel wings Bowie donned onstage dur­ing the high­ly ambi­tious but much-derid­ed Glass Spi­der Tour of the late nine­teen-eight­ies.

Going deep­er, there’s also the Sty­lo­phone, a kind of toy elec­tron­ic instru­ment from the late six­ties, that Bowie used on “Space Odd­i­ty” (and had to repur­chase on eBay); the much more pro­fes­sion­al-grade EMS suit­case syn­the­siz­er giv­en to him by Bri­an Eno, which he used on the “Berlin tril­o­gy” albums they made togeth­er; the per­son­al deck of Oblique Strate­gies, co-cre­at­ed by Eno, that shows signs of inten­sive use in Bowie’s own cre­ative process; his cor­re­spon­dence with Let’s Dance pro­duc­er Nile Rodgers (a cura­tor of the Bowie Cen­ter’s cur­rent exhi­bi­tion), about their sec­ond album Black Tie White Noise; and mate­ri­als from Omikron: The Nomad Soul, the com­put­er game to which he con­tributed music as well as a dig­i­tized per­for­mance in the late nineties.

The col­lec­tion that Bowie donat­ed to the V&A already came care­ful­ly orga­nized and cat­a­loged, which shows a metic­u­lous­ness uncom­mon to rock stars, and a delib­er­ate­ness about not just cul­ti­vat­ing his pub­lic image at any giv­en cul­tur­al moment, but also active­ly curat­ing the mate­ri­als of his own his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive. It seems Bowie always had one eye on the past: his own, of course, but also more dis­tant eras, rich with dis­used aes­thet­ics to revive and make his own. The oth­er eye he kept on the future, espe­cial­ly as the inter­net was grow­ing into a cul­tur­al force. The David Bowie Cen­ter has his per­son­al notes on the sub­ject, which include a ref­er­ence to BowieNet, the inter­net ser­vice provider he found­ed around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um. BowieNet is now long gone, of course, but Bowie’s lega­cy — espe­cial­ly now that it’s been insti­tu­tion­al­ly enshrined and made so acces­si­ble to the pub­lic — will out­last us all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

The Art Col­lec­tion of David Bowie: An Intro­duc­tion

Behold The Paint­ings of David Bowie: Neo-Expres­sion­ist Self Por­traits, Illus­tra­tions of Iggy Pop, and Much More

Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Bob Dylan-Inspired Design­ers of David Bowie’s Favorite Fur­ni­ture

David Bowie Is: The First Major Exhib­it Ded­i­cat­ed to Bowie Spans 50 Years & Fea­tures 300 Great Objects

The Musi­cal Career of David Bowie in One Minute … and One Con­tin­u­ous Take

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.