![\"Photograph](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Photograph-by-Soulla-Petrou-Mis-Teeq-Gicle-print-2003-4fyqh43i.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nReview at a glance<\/p>\n
This weekend, London gains a new heavyweight cultural pillar as the V&A East Museum opens its doors to the public. The latest big-name building to land in Stratford\u2019s newly christened East Bank hub following Sadler\u2019s Wells East and the V&A Storehouse, it comes with a hefty investment from the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and tips the East Bank over the \u00a3600\u2009million threshold as a whole: a statement flag planted in the Stratford soil towards making the area a competitive destination for the arts.<\/p>\n
The new museum\u2019s aim is not just to replicate its famous South Kensington forebear, but to carve out a particularly east London identity for the space, with local creatives and young people involved in shaping its direction from the beginning. Two permanent free galleries entitled Why We Make showcase an array of objects from the typically historic (Renaissance paintings and Japanese incense boxes) to the notably modern, with designer Molly Goddard\u2019s pink tulle dress, made famous by Jodie Comer in Killing Eve, given prime placing.<\/p>\n
Talking to The London Standard at the opening of the site on Tuesday evening, the Mayor spoke of the importance of making the V&A East an accessible and youth-facing space. \u201cI felt quite intimidated as a young boy, born and raised in south London, going to South Kensington,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was quite scary going into the Natural History Museum or the V&A. I didn\u2019t feel like it belonged to me. But this is very different \u2014 it\u2019s about making people feel welcome and getting younger people coming. If you can get the bug early and feel like art is for you and culture is for you, that\u2019s something you can enjoy and sustain for the rest of your life.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Photograph by Soulla Petrou, ‘Mis-Teeq’, Gicl\u00e9e print, 2003<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Victoria and Albert Museum<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his original pledges when running for the position back in 2016, Khan underlined his aim to give Stratford and east London a concrete cultural \u201clegacy\u201d via these new openings \u2014 which also include an outpost of the London College of Fashion and University College London, with a new BBC HQ set to open later this year. \u201cThe Olympics was great, but it came and went and, when you speak to Eastenders, they\u2019d say it was like a spaceship that landed and disappeared,\u201d he said. \u201cThe East End deserves a proper legacy and [with] all the institutions here, the deal was you\u2019ve got to give something back to this community.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first paid exhibition at the V&A East Museum is The Music is Black, a landmark deep dive into the contributions of black British music, tracing its history over the past 125 years. It\u2019s a choice that purposefully speaks to the area. \u201cIt\u2019s really important for that story to be told in this part of London, so Londoners who are black themselves can see the great contribution made by their forefathers and foremothers,\u201d said Khan. Outside the building on its opening night, there were teenagers already curious to see what\u2019s inside; it\u2019s immediately heartening to overhear a group of young people talking about how they can get a ticket to see the art.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s plenty in the exhibition, put together by the V&A\u2019s Curator of Africa and Diaspora: Performance Jacqueline Springer, that will appeal to a younger demographic too. Walking people through the ages, from the first ever stringed instruments and the idea of music as resistance in the age of colonialism, to modern titans of the black British arts such as Dizzee Rascal, Stormzy and Little Simz, The Music is Black naturally picks up steam as it moves towards the present day. A potted history of black artists from around the globe \u2014 from an all-too-small corner dedicated to Big Mama Thornton and the birth of American rock\u2019n\u2019roll to a room celebrating reggae in Jamaica \u2014 attempts to condense centuries of history into a digestible format, but it\u2019s when the UK ups its ante around the 1970s that the exhibition starts to pop.<\/p>\n
![\"Sam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Sam-White-Skepta-and-Jammer-Run-the-Road-Fabric-2005-834w8nky.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Sam White<\/p>\n
A tsunami of musical creativity<\/p>\n
From there, the sheer volume of genres created and popularised by black artists \u2014 lovers rock, 2 Tone, drum\u2019n\u2019bass, jungle, trip hop, UK garage, grime \u2014 emerges like a tidal wave. It\u2019s an overwhelming amount of cultural gravitas to distil into a few rooms; really, any one of these scenes would be deserving of its own focus. But there\u2019s something to be said for seeing such a greatest hits set of artefacts, one after the other: Shirley Bassey\u2019s golden Bond dress; Pauline Black from The Selector\u2019s dapper drainpipe suit; Joan Armatrading\u2019s handwritten chords to Love and Affection; Stormzy\u2019s iconic Banksy-painted stab-proof vest from his 2019 Glastonbury headline. JME\u2019s childhood Nintendo set-up is a sweet look at the kid who became a star, while a selection of photos from the first ever Notting Hill Carnival are a reminder of the seeds that shaped a London institution. <\/p>\n
Though there\u2019s far too much information to fit in the space, leading to a few slightly confused groupings that lump Nadine Benjamin, one of Britain\u2019s first black sopranos, in with Sugababes, The Music is Black feels like the right exhibition to launch this new space. It\u2019s modern and welcoming; it says what V&A East is all about. \u201cThere\u2019s been big challenges in the city over the past 10 years with Brexit and the pandemic, but we\u2019re investing in new things, which is really important,\u201d said Khan. \u201cGreat cities, like great sports teams, don\u2019t stand still because then you go backwards. You\u2019ve got to plan for the future and this is a good example of us putting our money where our mouth is.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Review at a glance This weekend, London gains a new heavyweight cultural pillar as the V&A East Museum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,388,1291,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-537226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-london","tag-museum","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}