Art At Your Fingertips

Imagine being able to visit a museum and examine up close thousand-year-old pottery, revel alone in jewellery from centuries past or peer inside a Versace bag.

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LONDON -

Now, London's V&A has launched a revolutionary new exhibition space, where visitors can choose from some 250,000 objects, order something they want to spend time looking at and have it delivered to a room for a private viewing.

Most museums have thousands of precious and historic items hidden away in their stores, which the public never gets to see or enjoy.

But the V&A East Storehouse, which opened on May 31 in a specially converted warehouse, has come up with a radical new concept. And it is totally free.

Senior curator Georgia Haseldine said: "Museums should be and are for everybody... the V&A's collection is for everybody. It belongs to everybody, and everyone should be able to have free, equitable and meaningful access to it.

"So, this is a world first. Never has anyone been able to be invited freely, without having to book into the same space as a national collection, on this scale."

One-fifth of the museum's total collection is now available to be viewed and enjoyed in the four-storey building on the former site of the 2012 London Olympic Games.