Dan Hicks Critiques V&A East Storehouse as Colonial Misdirection
In a searing opinion piece for ArtReview, curator Dan Hicks (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford) argues that the V&A East Storehouse, which opened in Hackney Wick in summer 2025, is a performative exercise in transparency that masks the museum's ongoing failures in documentation and its colonial legacy. Hicks notes that the building, originally the media centre for the 2012 London Olympics, was converted by developer Delancey and designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. He draws parallels between the V&A's expansion under director Tristram Hunt and the colonial-era 'Albertopolis' project, pointing out that the museum's 2.8 million-object collection has an estimated 800,000 objects missing from the public database. Hicks criticizes the lack of object labels, the guest curation by Kate Middleton, and the display of a fragment from the demolished Robin Hood Gardens estate. He calls for genuine transparency through full digitization, contrasting the V&A's approach with the British Museum's Documentation and Digitisation Programme. The piece ends with a call to reimagine museums as vehicles for social justice.
Key facts
- V&A East Storehouse opened in Hackney Wick in summer 2025.
- Building was originally the media centre for the 2012 London Olympics, converted by Delancey and designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
- The museum's collection of 2.8 million objects has an estimated 800,000 missing from the public database.
- No object labels are provided; only QR codes and printouts offer limited information.
- Kate Middleton guest-curated a display with 14 objects.
- A fragment of Robin Hood Gardens (1972, Alison and Peter Smithson) is a centerpiece.
- Tristram Hunt has defended the museum's expansion and criticized calls for social justice.
- Hicks contrasts V&A's lack of digitization with British Museum's plan to catalog all objects by 2029.
Entities
Artists
- Dan Hicks
- Stephen Gill
- Norman Wilkinson
- Edward Wadsworth
- Charles Willson Peale
- Alison Smithson
- Peter Smithson
- Do Ho Suh
- Beatrix Potter
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- Hannah Young
- Kate Middleton
- Tristram Hunt
- Tim Reeve
- Roy Strong
- Boris Johnson
- Sumaya Kassim
- Jonathan Jones
- George MacDonald Fraser
- Frantz Fanon
- Lord Curzon
- Lord Elgin
- Prince Albert
Institutions
- V&A East Storehouse
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- Pitt Rivers Museum
- British Museum
- National Audit Office
- Royal Photographic Society
- East India Company
- Here East
- Delancey
- Hawkins\Brown
- Diller Scofidio + Renfro
- Allies and Morrison
- National Museum of Ireland
- National Museum of Scotland
- Musée du quai Branly
- Humboldt Forum
- Museum of Anthropology at UBC
- Young V&A
- V&A Dundee
- V&A Wedgwood Collection
- V&A East
- Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
- The Builder
- RIBA Journal
- The Times
- Guardian
- ArtReview
Locations
- Hackney Wick
- London
- East London
- Hackney Cut
- River Lea
- Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
- South Kensington
- Kensington Gore
- Bethnal Green
- Victoria Park
- Dublin
- Edinburgh
- Oxford
- Bradford
- Poplar
- Stoke-on-Trent
- Dundee
- Manchester
- Bristol
- Birmingham
- Belfast
- Jaipur
- Keynsham Abbey
- Wales
- Paris
- Berlin
- Vancouver
- United Kingdom
- England