The Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) proposed branch in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, dubbed V&A East, will be 20,000 sq. m in total, according to a planning brief by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London. It will have around 10,000 sq. m of display space. This compares with the 7,900 sq. m of display space arranged over three floors in Tate Modern. If it can raise the required funding, the V&A plans to display parts of its permanent collection, to mount major exhibitions and to provide storage space. The brief says that shows will be presented “in ways that surprise or even shock”. V&A East will be a key part of the new cultural quarter, along with a Sadler’s Wells dance space, a branch of the University of the Arts London and a yet-to-be-announced “fourth institution”, with a University College London building on a nearby site.
Originally published in The Art Newspaper as 'V&A East could be vast'