A closer look
Photography by Kayla Raquel MiddletonStyling by Holly BartleyText by Edie Musker
The Victoria & Albert Museum displays some 70,000 objects, yet this represents only a fraction of its permanent collection. This is true of many such institutions: the British Museum holds some eight million objects of which just 1% is ever accessible to the public. For too long, the museum archive has been synonymous with hierarchies of knowledge, kept from the people these institutions claim to serve.
When V&A East Storehouse opened in May 2025, it heralded a new paradigm in British museums. Housing over 250,000 artefacts, it dispelled the sector’s long-standing dust and fustiness, inviting visitors to engage with archival objects in a way that has never been seen before in the UK. At the Storehouse, the usually elusive inner workings of an institution are laid bare for all to see.
Swiss eyewear brand AKONI is built on a philosophy of innovation and seeing things in a new light, making the V&A East Storehouse – with its radical openness – a natural point of alignment. In collaboration with AKONI, TANK invited three visionaries across the fields of curation, architecture and design to select objects from the collection and muse upon what it means to finally see what has always been there. .
“Curation is an incredible tool to give people different paths into a wider complexity of knowledge”
– Tamar Clarke-Brown
Tamar Clarke-Brown is an artist, curator and writer exploring open access, archives and what she terms ‘metabolic memory’. At the Serpentine, she curates and produces commissions with Arts Technologies. Upcoming projects include an archive display exploring the generative legacy of the department. In Autumn 2027, Arts Technologies also launches the Future Art Ecosystems Fellowship Programme to support the next generation of practitioners.
Tamar examines a textile sample made by Japanese design studio NUNO Corporation.
Tamar wears a jumper, skirt, scarf and broach by N.21 and jewellery by Florence West Jewellery. Her glasses are by AKONI Eyewear.
A mancala board carved from teak. Mancala is one of the world’s oldest games: boards have been found in Jordan’s Ayn Ghazal archaeological site dating back to 5000 BCE.
The Sony DD-1EX Electronic Book Player, the world’s first electronic book reader. Released in 1991, it could store 100,000 pages of text and boasted a battery life of three hours.
“A well-designed object is something that can see a time when it may no longer be in use” – Anmol Ahuja
Anmol Ahuja is a writer, editor, and built environment academic. His research spans housing, decolonial theory, climate justice, and the democracy of access. He is currently features editor for the architectural magazine and platform STIRworld.
The Agra Colonnade. Once part of a hammam built for Shah Jahan, the colonnade bears the characteristics of Mughal architecture.
Anmol wears a jacket by AMI Paris, shirt by Sunspel and trousers by Levi’s. His glasses are by AKONI Eyewear.
A drawing by British theatre designer Oliver Messel for a theatrical adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon.
The “Kodaslide 40” slide projector, designed in 1961 by industrial designer Kenneth Grange.
“The architect has to create a space that can be misused, misunderstood and reinterpreted, so that the inhabitant becomes the architect themselves” – Ingrid Schroder
Ingrid Shroder is director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture. Her research spans new pedagogical models, shifting perceptions of nature and landscape amid climate change, liberation architecture and urbanism from the American Revolutionary period to the late 20th century, to Tropical Modernism’s legacy in sub-Saharan Africa.
A 17th-century stained glass panel depicting the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son.
Ingrid wears a jumper, shirt, trousers and scarf by Margaret Howell and jewellery by Florence West Jewellery. Her glasses are by AKONI Eyewear.
The “Djerba” dress, part of Lanvin’s Spring Summer collection in 1971. The garment’s vibrant patterns were based on a series of prints by artist Eduardo Paolozzi.
A late-17th-century Dutch cabinet kitchen. Wealthy Dutch families would collect precious items and store them in cabinets of curiosities, sometimes recreating their homes in miniaturised form.