V&A East opens South Asia Now on 24 April 2027, more than 200 works of art, fashion, architecture and design made in South Asia and its diaspora today.
Museums have shown South Asian art in Britain for two hundred years and almost always in the past tense: Mughal miniatures, Company painting, textiles collected under empire, arranged as heritage. V&A East is doing the opposite. South Asia Now is present-tense by design: the art, fashion, architecture and design being made in the region and its diaspora right now, and the influence running outward from it rather than the other way.
The image the museum released to announce it sets the register: Tavish Gunasena’s Paddy Field Play, Lead The Way, made in 2022 for the Sri Lankan label AMESH. Two hundred works is a large opening statement for a museum in its second year, and the range — art beside fashion beside architecture beside product design — is the V&A’s method rather than a compromise between departments.
It opens at V&A East on Saturday 24 April 2027 with more than two hundred works, in the Stratford building rather than South Kensington, and that is itself part of the argument, since the new museum sits in one of the most South Asian parts of London and was built to hold a different conversation from the one Cromwell Road has been having since 1852. A closing date and ticket prices are not yet published; only the opening day is fixed. Only the opening day is fixed so far.