![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/02-KeepingCulture-cover.jpg?w=400\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\tIt is a symptom of museums\u2019 perpetually acquisitive nature that a majority of global museum collections\u2014up to 95 percent, according to some estimates\u2014remains in storage. A number of high-profile institutions are addressing this surplus by providing public views into their storage facilities: While \u201cvisible storage\u201d has been around since the 80s, projects like The Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (opened in 2021) and V&A East Storehouse in London (opened last year) promise a more spectacular and interactive experience, one that begins to blur the lines between storage and display. Often housed in costly, starchitect-designed facilities, these new institutional formations are the subject of a new anthology, Keeping Culture: The Architecture of Storage.<\/em> Published by Valiz, it features contributions from architects, critics, and historians, many of whom are skeptical of the possibility that storage can be displayed and still be considered storage, or if its fundamental nature is as something kept in reserve.<\/p>\n \n\tEdited by architecture scholars Susan Holden and Ashley Paine, Keeping Culture<\/em> offers a critical analysis of storage through an array of contemporary case studies ranging from Japan to Flanders. In focusing on architecture, the book emphasizes how buildings can structure relationships between the public, museum employees, and collections. V&A East, for example, brings visitors directly into the center of the building, where aestheticized crates and pallets expose both objects and the ways they are contained, transported, and cared for.<\/p>\n \n\tA lengthy introductory chapter by the editors lays out some of the assumptions around storage, including that storage facilities present a neutral encounter with objects, freed from the authoritative voice of the museum. Absent what Walter Benjamin termed the \u201cmild boredom of order,\u201d the ostensible \u201cdisorder\u201d of storage might provide a more authentic experience\u2014a type of unmediated encounter underscored by frequently used terms like \u201cvisibility,\u201d \u201ctransparency,\u201d and the \u201cdemocratization\u201d of collections (as in the book\u2019s interview with Tim Reeve, the deputy director of the V&A).<\/p>\n \n\tBut putting storage on display in the name of democratizing culture assumes objects\u2019 accessibility is only about space and physical access, and that curatorial interpretation is a screen rather than a bridge to the thing itself. The things museums collect are often obstinate and unyielding; research and context can be a way of coaxing them to speak.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen storage itself is put on display, of course, the museum is still speaking, declaring both the wealth of its holdings and its generosity in sharing them. Several of the anthology\u2019s authors question these open storage concepts, wondering if they offer merely the museum in another guise. British writer and former Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic acerbically calls The Depot \u201chighly performative\u201d in a way that \u201crisks feeling manipulative.\u201d The stakes of this performance are high as museums face increasing criticism about whether they should have quite so many things, especially things acquired in the wake of colonial violence.<\/p>\n \n\tMost problematic is the storage of human remains, as the Indigenous Australian architect Carroll Go-Sam addresses in her essay. Go-Sam outlines Australia\u2019s attempt to create a home for Indigenous cultural materials and a National Resting Place for unprovenanced and low-provenanced ancestral remains, foregrounding the complexity of relying on architecture to reconcile past harms.<\/p>\n \n\tCollecting is often a function of loss, an attempt to save something that might otherwise disappear, as the volume\u2019s final essay poignantly articulates. The Spanish architect Marina Otero Verzier highlights efforts to preserve the entire island nation of Tuvalu as a series of digital bits. As rising sea levels endanger its existence, Tuvalu, an archipelago between Hawaii and Australia, has endeavored to become \u201cthe first digital nation\u201d by \u201crecreating its land, archiving its culture, and digitizing its government.\u201d Housed in remote data centers whose energy-intensive maintenance perpetuates the changing environmental conditions that threaten Tuvalu\u2019s existence, the attempt to redeposit territory digitally drives home the paradoxes, and costs, of storage. When cultural critic Susan Stewart called Noah\u2019s ark the archetypal collection, she was writing about preservation and the future potential of collections. But given the example of Tuvalu, I\u2019m left thinking about the flood, and all that is washed away in exchange for what we keep.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-in-america\/aia-reviews\/open-storage-va-east-depot-museum-boijmans-van-beuningen-keeping-culture-1234790311\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/View-of-the-Weston-Collections-Hall-at-VA-East-Storehouse.-Image-by-David-Parry-PA-Media-Assignments-4.jpg?w=1024″] It is a symptom of museums\u2019 perpetually acquisitive nature that a majority of global museum collections\u2014up to 95 percent, according to some estimates\u2014remains in storage. A number of high-profile institutions are addressing this surplus by providing public views into their storage facilities: While \u201cvisible storage\u201d has been around since the 80s, projects […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2014272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2014272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2014272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2014272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2014272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/DSR_VA-East-Storehouse_HuftonCrow_12.jpg?w=400\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/View-of-Weston-Collections-Hall-which-features-over-100-mini-curated-displays-at-VA-East-Storehouse.-Image-by-Kemka-Ajoku-for-VA-3.jpg?w=400\")
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