In an age when we know our musicians through Instagram and Notes, the artefacts set to go on show at the new V&A centre preserve not only Bowie’s genius, but the idea of memorabilia itself.
The collection of 80,000 artefacts has been made exclusively available to them: the museum exhibited some of the archive in 2013, but the new exhibition will be more extensive, and will be held not in the V&A itself but in a specially created centre in east London: The David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts. Tristram Hunt, the V&A’s director, said the centre will provide a “new sourcebook for the Bowies of tomorrow”.