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When Tim Reeve, deputy director and COO of Victoria and Albert Museum in London, pledged that the V&A East Storehouse, opening to the public on Saturday, May 31, will offer “a completely new cultural experience” that is “on a scale unimaginable until now,” he did not exaggerate.

Standing in the middle of the glass-floored Collections Hall, the heart of the building, I found myself immersed in an infinite cabinet of curiosities that is home to over half a million precious objects representing the pinnacles of global cultures. Rather than following a highly curated exhibition route based on a grand narrative, here, I could roam around and explore the shelves according to my interests. It was joyous and liberating.

A view of more than over 100 mini displays inside the new V&A East Storehouse. Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images.

“This is a new way of engaging with the collection,” Holly Harris, the V&A East Storehouse’s senior project manager who has been working on the museum for seven years, told me while showing me around the building during Wednesday’s press preview.

Opening to the public for free, seven-days a week, after a decade of planning, V&A East Storehouse indeed offers a ground-breaking museum experience. It is essentially a working store for the institution. As the first of the V&A East opening to the public (V&A East Museum will open in spring 2026), the Storehouse occupies a vast area of the former London 2012 Olympics Media and Broadcast Centre, a complex now known as Here East. The facility designed by architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, is part of East Bank, the new cultural quarter in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, around a 20-minute walk from Stratford station in East London. It sits next to some 600 homes located in neighboring apartment buildings in the area, which is still being developed.

The interior of V&A East Storehouse ©Hufton+Crow.

Spanning four stories with total floor area clocking in at 172,222 square feet—an equivalent to 38 full-size basketball courts or three large IKEA buildings—the Storehouse is home to more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and 1,000 archives of a vast range of creative disciplines, from paintings, performing arts, and fashion to historical artifacts, architecture, and pop culture. Works displayed on the purpose-built shelves are changed frequently, as they might be sent for inclusion in other exhibitions, according to Harris. Some pieces are selected for the nearly 100 mini-curated displays attached with QR codes, allowing visitors to learn more about the objects.

Where to start? Beneath the glass floor where I was standing was the Agra Colonnade, a colossal marble structure made with five columns constructed in the 1630s. It was originally part of the front of the hammam, or bathhouse, built for emperor Shah Jahan in the Red Fort at Agra. The ground floor is closed to walk-in visitors but I could admire the work clearly from above while fighting my fear of heights.

View of a section of Robin Hood Gardens, a former residential estate in Poplar, east London, at V&A East Storehouse. Image by Kemka Ajoku for V&A.

A distinctive facade of a Brutalist building installed on the railings of the corridors drew my attention. It was a three-story section of Robin Hood Gardens, an iconic former social housing estate designed by Alison and Peter Smithson in East London. It was built in 1972 but demolished to make way for redevelopment. I had never been there before. The only impression I had of the site came from Do Ho Suh’s mesmerizing video work capturing the site, which is currently on view at Tate Modern. The display includes the exterior facades and interiors of a maisonette flat. Accompanied with voice recordings of former residents reminiscing their lives in the estate and Suh’s video, it gives visitors a glimpse of the social history of East London.

Robin Hood Gardens is among the six large-scale objects that anchor the Storehouse. The design and placement of these objects were already thought out during the early planning stage for the building, according to Harris. She cited the ceiling of the now lost Torrijos Palace from Spain, which was acquired by the V&A in 1905. Built around 1490, the ornate carved ceiling with Islamic influences was constructed with strapwork carpentry, utilizing interlacing wood strips. While one could admire the intricate interior of the ceiling standing beneath it, the display also exposes the framework holding the ceiling together on the exterior, offering visitors a behind-the-scenes experience of museums.

Visitor looking at 15th-century gilded wooden ceiling from the now-lost Torrijos Palace in Spain, at V&A East Storehouse. Photo: David Parry/PA Media Assignments.

Other highlights include the Kaufmann Office from the 1930s designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which was reassembled and the is the only complete interior by the famed architect outside the U.S. The Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the first fitted kitchen in the 20th century, is on display alongside a short film on food culture inspired by the kitchen by Xaymaca Awoyungbo, a member of the V&A Youth Collective.

Visitors looking at Picasso’s stage cloth designed for the Ballets Russes at V&A East Storehouse. David Parry/PA Media Assignments. Stage Cloth Copyright, the estate of Pablo Picasso.

I followed Harris through the shelves to a dark room. Upon stepping inside, my  jaw dropped. Before me is the towering Ballets Russes Le Train Bleu theater stage cloth painted by stage designer Prince Alexander Schervashidze in 1924. The work is a copy of Pablo Picasso’s 1922 small painting The Two Women Running along the Beach, enlarged on a canvas measured at 33 feet high and 36 feet wide. Impressed by the quality of the work, Picasso signed the cloth in 1924 but it has been rarely seen in public until now, which is placed in a gallery especially built to show the museum’s collection of large-scale textiles.

The Conservation Studios, where conservators investigate and treat museum objects so they can slow their deterioration and safely display them. Photo by Yui Mok/PA Images via Getty Images.

Besides admiring these wondrous objects, I also caught a glimpse of this world class museum’s conservation work. The Storehouse is equipped with four conservation studios, and visitors can take a closer look at how museum staff and conservators work through a glass overlook. It is truly “your backstage pass to the V&A,” as Reeve described it.

It was impossible to see everything in one go, and by the time I left, I was already planning for another visit. Besides visiting the highly anticipated David Bowie Centre, a new home to the pop icon’s archive set to open on September 13, I want to experience Order an Object. Open to everybody, one can search for an object from the V&A’s collection online, book a time slot, and view the selected object in an up close and personal manner with assistance from museum staff in one of the study rooms. A maximum of five items are allowed per booking.

Order an Object appointment at V&A East Storehouse. Photo: Bet Bettencourt.

“It is a booking, not a request,” Harris noted. You don’t need to be an academic researcher or provide any professional explanation for why you want to view the objects. “This is an amazing service offered to the public. Someone can come to see something just because it makes them happy.” Since booking was opened on May 13, more than 250 appointments have already been made to see more than 1,000 objects. One of the earliest bookings includes the viewing of four wedding dresses from the 1930s, Harris noted. A 1954 pink silk taffeta evening dress designed by Cristóbal Balenciaga is among the most popular items, the museum said.

The exuberant visit of V&A East Storehouse was an incredibly moving experience that made me fall in love with museums all over again. It is a gift to London and the world.