When Gus Casely-Hayford was a youngster, his sister Margaret took him to the British Museum. He hadn’t all the time loved museums: “As much as I was attracted to them, they weren’t places I felt wholly welcome in,” he says – particularly since they not often instructed the tales of Black British folks like him. But Margaret was decided. “She told me that these spaces belong to all of us. They may not tell our stories, but she would say to me ‘That’s something that you can change.’”
Now, because the director of V&A East, he’s constructing a house by which “young people can come in and have those transformative moments that change the trajectory of their lives”. These are grand ambitions for the venture which lives on two websites in London’s Olympic Park: V&A Storehouse, which opened in May this 12 months and has already exceeded its customer goal in a third of the projected time, and V&A East Museum, an exhibition and gallery house housed inside a five-storey constructing designed by Irish architects O’Donnell & Tuomey on Stratford Waterfront. The intention, says V&A director Tristram Hunt, is “to open the V&A’s collection up in new ways to audiences which have historically been underserved by major cultural institutions”.
After years of delay, which Casely-Hayford attributes to “the pandemic … issues with labour supply” and the big problem of launching “two buildings of this level of complexity”, the museum website will lastly open its doorways to the general public on 18 April subsequent 12 months. It’s a key a part of East Bank, the mayor of London’s £1.1bn cultural and training quarter designed to rework the previous Olympic boroughs, what Hunt calls “a crucial component of the London 2012 legacy”. V&A East sits alongside Sadler’s Wells East, London College of Fashion, UCL East and BBC Music Studios. What slice of the pie did the V&A get from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport? A “very generous” one, Casely-Hayford replies.
The director is charming and cheerful, but it surely’s his ardour for the humanities which leaves the best impression after I meet him on the V&A Storehouse, surrounded by a collage of references from soccer shirts to bikes and vases left by native college college students. His mission for V&A East was to make it a welcoming and provoking place for any younger, creatively minded one who may not but be prepared to soak up the South Kensington V&A, the establishment’s mothership, however who has grown out of Young V&A, aimed toward youngsters underneath 14. Casely-Hayford says that east London was the right dwelling: in addition to the capital’s conventional manufacturing and designing base, “it has given us some of the truly great creative figures – Alexander McQueen, David Bailey”. Casely-Hayford says that he’s decided to search out “equivalent figures” inside youthful generations and have V&A East as their level of entry to the humanities. “You see lots of young people who are full of that creative passion, but they don’t necessarily feel at home in museums.”
To handle this, over the course of the previous 5 years, he has personally visited each single secondary college within the 4 boroughs surrounding the location, whereas the broader venture has consulted about 30,000 younger folks, influencing each side of the establishment, from the everlasting assortment to the employees uniform (a burgundy waistcoat with a cinched again that may be customised to permit for self-expression). The staffing of the venture additionally displays the demographic complexity of the realm. “We’ve worked really hard to embed V&A East in local communities,” Casely-Hayford says. “This is a space that belongs to them. These are collections which belong to all of us. Hearing them reflect back the passion, the aspirations, the objectives, in terms that are theirs is deeply heartening.”
So what will likely be on present? Hunt says that “we have radically reinterpreted the V&A’s world-class collections through a contemporary lens, allowing us to explore topics that matter to our audiences, such as representation, identity, wellbeing, craft practice and social justice.” V&A East Museum’s everlasting assortment is known as Why We Make. “Before we walk or talk,” Casely-Hayford says, “we make. It’s an impulse that is shared by every culture and across the span of human history.”
The concept that we shouldn’t be attempting to make our viewers broad and numerous is absurd
The assortment consists of about 500 objects from greater than 200 practitioners throughout greater than 60 nations. One is a piece by Bisila Noah, an Ecuadorian Guinea Spanish ceramicist, which Casely-Hayford describes as “absolutely exquisite”. There may also be a pink gown by native designer Molly Goddard, and textiles from the postwar Trinidadian designer Althea McNish, “objects that tell the story of human creativity through all the different mediums that the V&A is known for.” V&A East will, Casely-Hayford says, be unapologetically numerous. “Those different components of intellectual DNA inform all national museums. The idea that we shouldn’t be engaging in trying to make our audiences as broad, as diverse, as universal as possible, seems to be counter to that.”
There may also be momentary exhibitions, the primary known as “The Music Is Black”, an odyssey by means of 125 years of Black British music historical past, exploring genres from calypso and hip-hop to reggae and drill. Casely-Hayford gained’t go into particulars about what the exhibition accommodates, however Seal, Shirley Bassey, Stormzy and Little Simz will all function ultimately, together with the primary guitar owned by Joan Armatrading, a “personal hero” of the director.
As optimistic as this all sounds, how will Casely-Hayford deal with the larger points going through museums? He has been a main voice within the return of looted artefacts, a problem the V&A is confronting. “I’m very proud that the V&A is among a number of museums who have returned objects, particularly the programme we’ve been involved in with Ghana,” he says. “We’re limited by statute in the ways we can engage with these collections, so they are returned on loan, and are on display in the Manhyia Palace Museum at this very moment.”
On the difficulty of moral funding (since, like many museums, V&A East will use company sponsorship to assist pay for some momentary exhibitions) he’s much less particular. Some museum representatives have dismissed objections to museums taking cash from corporations which pollute the atmosphere or worse as “relentless negativity”. “Ethical funding is something that concerns everyone who works in museums,” Casely-Hayford says. “And of course, we would want to be deeply scrupulous about any institution, company or partner that we engage with.”
He’s a scion of the Casely-Hayford dynasty, a distinguished Ghanaian-British household descended from JE Casely-Hayford, a Nineteenth-century politician and author who was an advocate of pan-African nationalism. His Ghanaian father, Victor, was a skilled lawyer who labored as an accountant, and his Sierra Leonean mom, Ransolina, labored for the British Council. Both have been immigrants to Britain.
His elder siblings have been all excessive achievers – his sister Margaret was chancellor of Coventry University, and brother Peter an govt producer of BBC’s “Panorama.” Another brother Joe, who died of most cancers in 2019 aged 62, was a pioneering dressmaker, and the focus of Somerset House’s 2023 exhibition on Black style, “The Missing Thread.” Casely-Hayford turns into emotional when speaking about him. “I absolutely adored him, he was my inspiration,” he says. “The other day I was looking at my bookshelves. I have a range of very old art books and when I opened them up, every single one was a present from him.”
Casely-Hayford has had a lengthy and diverse profession, presenting the BBC sequence “Lost Kingdoms of Africa”, authoring books on West African artwork and, earlier than becoming a member of V&A East, working as director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington DC (he says that it “breaks my heart” to see the Trumpian persecution of his former colleagues’ work). His first begin within the museum sector got here after he accomplished his PhD in African historical past from SOAS University of London and joined the training division of the British Museum, the identical house by which Margaret instructed him of the opportunity of change.
While there he staged “Africa 05″, the largest African arts season ever hosted in Britain, which engaged 150 cultural institutions to “contribute towards a particular moment in 2005 when we celebrated Africa and its history”. This extravaganza additionally served as a disruption to the sector. “Museums, by their very nature, are conservative,” Casely-Hayford says. “They don’t just hold the past. But many people within museums reify aspects of it.” What did he be taught from pulling off this feat? “That you can make the changes that seem to be impossible.”
He describes V&A East as the best venture of his profession, in fulfilling his intention to make these establishments which have been based “for all of us” universally accessible. “These are spaces that tell our stories through the best things that humanity has ever created,” he says. “The arts are about us making a mark that we hope will outlast us. And one of the few ways in which we can really know what other people are feeling, rather than thinking alone, is through creativity. Museums are repositories of the finest of those impulses.”
By Jason Okundaye