This year’s public Annual Address, which follows the Members-only AGM on Wednesday May 21st, will be given via Zoom by former Chair Simon Sladen, senior curator at the V&A
See below for the Zoom link

From Blythe House to Storehouse: 100 Years of Theatre & Performance at the V&A

The V&A is currently undergoing its most intense period of transformation since being founded as the Museum of Manufacture in 1852. 2023 saw the opening of Young V&A (formerly the Museum of Childhood), 2024 marked the Theatre and Performance Collections’ centenary with refurbishment of the permanent galleries at South Kensington and 2025 heralds the much-anticipated opening of V&A East, comprising a new museum, new research and collections centre ‘Storehouse’ and the establishment of the David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts.

This paper will reflect on the position of Theatre and Performance at the V&A as it moves to a family of sites a hundred years on since Gabrielle Enthoven’s gift of 80,000 playbills, programmes and other theatrical ephemera in 1924. It will introduce and consider what researchers can expect from the new experience of Storehouse, set to open on 31 May this year, and explore the ways in which researching at and with the V&A will be different to the days of Blythe House, with its barbed wire turnstile entrance and glazed brick interiors.

Simon Sladen is Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Senior Tutor (Performance) on the V&A / RCA’s History of Design MA. He recently co-chaired a museum-wide initiative about the future of curatorial practice at the V&A and helped create the museum’s new Curatorial Training Programme. Recent exhibitions for the museum include Enthoven Unboxed: 100 Years of Collecting Performance, Re:Imagining Musicals and Laughing Matters: The State of a Nation. Contributions to V&A publications include Calling the Shots: A Queer History of Photography, Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser and The Story of Scottish Design. His chapter ‘Carry on Curating: Collecting Comedy at the V&A’ was published earlier this year in Routledge’s Researching Popular Entertainment.

Topic: Annual Lecture Simon Sladen: ‘From Blythe House to Storehouse: 100 Years of Theatre & Performance at the V&A’
Time: May 21, 2025 07:30 PM London
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https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82934360722?pwd=iO8NU0neUoENXmLv6nRfa8JLtAIl03.1

Meeting ID: 829 3436 0722
Passcode: 12306