The Last Dinner Party and Nile Rodgers are curating special exhibitions for the David Bowie Centre, the Victoria & Albert Museum has announced.
First teased back in February 2023, the centre will open on September 13 at the V&A East Storehouse. Today, V&A has announced a number of special displays at the museum, including specially curated exhibitions by prominent musicians.
The David Bowie Centre will feature over 90,000 of Bowie’s personal items and nine special displays featuring newly uncovered revelations, items and unreleased projects – these displays can be booed for one-on-one time by visitors to get an intimate, closer look at Bowie’s archive.
Of these nine displays, two are being curated by The Last Dinner Party and Bowie collaborator Nile Rodgers. The Last Dinner Party’s selection is mainly composed of items from the 1970s, reflecting the inspiration that Bowie had stirred up in the band to “stand up for themselves and their music”. Their curation includes exclusive photos by Mick Rock of Bowie in the studio, Bowie’s handwritten ‘Win’ lyrics, writings from the 1976 ‘Station To Station’ tour and his Electronic Music Studios synthesiser user manual – the synth was used on ‘Low’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’.
The Last Dinner Party said of their opportunity to curate a Bowie display: “David Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists like us to stand up for ourselves. Bowie is a constance source of inspiration to us. When we first started developing ideas for TLDP, we took a similar approach to Bowie developing his ‘Station to Station’ album – we had a notebook and would write words we wanted to associate with the band. It was such a thrill to explore Bowie’s archive, and see first-hand the process that went into his world-building and how he created a sense of community and belonging for those that felt like outcasts or alienated – something that’s really important to us in our work too.”
The group also unboxed several Bowie items and artefacts for V&A – which includes a look at the icon’s Aladdin Sane costume and one of his catsuits from Ziggy Stardust – and speak further of his impact on them. Check it out below.
As for Nile Rodgers’ curation, he’s selected items that reflect his and Bowie’s “shared love of the music that had both made and saved our lives”. These include personal correspondence between them for the 1993 ‘Black Tie White Noise’ album, a bespoke Peter Hall suit work by Bowie for the ‘Serious Moonlight’ tour and more.
Rodgers said: “My creative life with David Bowie provided the greatest success of his incredible career, but our friendship was just as rewarding. Our bond was built on a love of the music that had both made and saved our lives.”
Other displays at the David Bowie Centre will include a curation of his Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane personas, his creative collaborations, the creation of his 1975 album ‘Young Americans’ and more.
The David Bowie Centre opens on September 13 – entry will be free, but ticketed. You will be able to book your tickets at a later date, and you can also book out slots for one-on-one time to explore selected items from David Bowie’s archives.
