Expansion, Exhibition and a New Chapter in East London
The Victoria and Albert Museum enters 2026 in a state of considered momentum. Under the leadership of Sir Tristram Hunt — knighted in the 2026 New Year Honours for services to museums — the institution has broadened its reach considerably since Hunt took the directorship in 2017. The V&A has evolved into a multi-site museum group that now includes the V&A Wedgwood Collection in Stoke-on-Trent, V&A Dundee in Scotland, the revamped Young V&A, and two new V&A East sites in east London. For gallery professionals and institutional colleagues seeking to understand the direction of one of the world's foremost decorative arts and design museums, the current programme and the opening of V&A East Museum offer a great deal to consider.
The Exhibition Programme at South Kensington
The flagship South Kensington site has opened 2026 with a programme that speaks to the museum's long-standing commitment to fashion as a subject of serious scholarly and curatorial inquiry. The Marie Antoinette Style exhibition, which runs until 22 March, has drawn considerable attention from both the public and the press. Some 250 objects can be seen, including exceptional loans never displayed outside Versailles and France, among them rare personal items such as the Queen's own silk slippers, jewels from her private collection, and the final note she wrote in her life. The exhibition also traces how Antoinette continues to shape the work of contemporary designers including Sofia Coppola, Manolo Blahnik and Vivienne Westwood.
Following in late March is what will likely be the season's most discussed fashion show. Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, staged in the Sainsbury Gallery from 28 March to 1 November 2026, will chart the legacy of Elsa Schiaparelli from the 1920s to the present day under the current creative direction of Daniel Roseberry, with more than 200 objects spanning garments, accessories, jewellery, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture and archive material. The exhibition is five years in the making and reflects the museum's curatorial ambition to reframe the relationship between fashion atelier and fine art. As the museum's director of exhibitions Daniel Slater observed at the Paris press conference, the aim is "to entirely change the way in which fashion can be experienced in a fine art museum."
Later in the year, Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific opens on 16 May 2026 at V&A South Kensington, a programme that reflects a deliberate broadening of the geographic and cultural scope of the collection's public presentation.
V&A East Museum: Architecture, Community and the Act of Making
The most significant institutional development this year is the opening of V&A East Museum. The museum will open on 18 April 2026 as a cornerstone of the East Bank cultural complex in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. The ambitious regeneration project was inspired by the cultural boom in South Kensington after the 1851 Great Exhibition and London's South Bank after the Festival of Britain in 1951.
The building itself merits close attention from those interested in the intersection of architecture and institutional identity. Designed around a central core, its galleries weave together across each floor, inviting visitors to explore the building, with a large adaptable gallery space presenting major temporary exhibitions. The architects O'Donnell + Tuomey drew inspiration from an unexpected source: the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga. As with Balenciaga's creations, the outer skin of the new V&A building acts as a three-dimensional 'folded dress', lending the museum a distinctive form and striking identity.
The two permanent free galleries, titled Why We Make, represent the conceptual heart of the new museum. Designed by JA Projects in collaboration with the V&A East Youth Collective, the galleries present works across ten themes including representation, identity, wellbeing, social justice and environmental action, drawing together objects spanning multiple periods and cultures — from Italian Renaissance paintings and sixteenth-century scent cases to an eighteenth-century Spitalfields silk dress and nineteenth-century coral jewellery from India and Tibet.
The inaugural exhibition, The Music is Black: A British Story, opens alongside the museum. Developed in partnership with BBC Music, the exhibition traces the impact of Black British music from 1900 to the present day, featuring objects such as Joan Armatrading's childhood guitar, fashion worn by Little Simz, and photographs by Jennie Baptiste, Dennis Morris, Eddie Otchere and Sam White. Together with its sister site, the V&A East Storehouse, which opened in May 2025, the new museum cements east London's role as a hub of global cultural exchange and innovation.
Leadership and Institutional Direction
Sir Tristram Hunt has spoken candidly about the challenges facing major public institutions. In a recent interview, he noted that "the amount we get from the British government has fallen and fallen," requiring the museum to raise ever greater sums through other means. His response has been to pursue what he describes as a high-low approach — remaining scholarly without falling into scholasticism — while simultaneously expanding the museum's audience and geographic reach.
The V&A has credited Hunt's "bold and thoughtful leadership," drawn from his background as a historian, author and former parliamentarian, and noted that he has been "a driving force behind major initiatives including V&A East, championing new ways to connect collections, creativity and communities."
For art institutions and galleries considering how a major collecting museum sustains intellectual rigour while opening to broader, more diverse constituencies, the V&A's current trajectory offers a model worth studying in detail. The ambition is neither modest nor vague: it is to demonstrate that the atelier and the archive, the community workshop and the scholarly exhibition, are not in competition but are, at their best, inseparable.
Further information is available at vam.ac.uk
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