The Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum network has announced its 2027 exhibition programming across three of its sites in London and Dundee, Scotland.
The spotlight falls on emerging artists and designers from South Asia in a show due to launch next year at the new V&A East Museum, which opened in Stratford, east London, in April 2026, near the institution’s new storehouse location.
South Asia Now: Fashion. Art. Design., which opens 24 April next year, will include more than 200 works and is billed as “the first major international exhibition to showcase the extraordinary breadth of creativity rooted in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka”. The show will feature pieces by the Sri Lankan designer Amesh Wijesekera; further details, including participating artists, are to be announced.
The show follows the acclaimed inaugural exhibition The Music is Black: A British Story (until 3 January 2027). When V&A East opened, its director, Gus Casely-Hayford, told The Art Newspaper: “At V&A East, and across our two sites, we’re deeply embedded in our local communities. We’re locally rooted with a global outlook.”
Promotional poster by Jamie Reid for Sex Pistols’ single God Save The Queen, 1977
Courtesy Sex Pistols Residuals, Universal Music Group
Other V&A exhibitions announced for 2027 include Punk to Pop at its flagship South Kensington site (opens 13 March 2027) which promises to be “an immersive exhibition that will re-examine the rich and eclectic creative explosion across music, art and fashion from 1972–1985”, according to a museum statement.
The show will examine how bands such as Joy Division, Sex Pistols and Wham! became global icons against the turbulent political backdrop of the time. Around 300 objects, from stage costumes to photography and music videos, will be included.
Clare Twomey, Monument
Photo by Andy Paradise
Sculpture in Clay: British Ceramics 1985 to Now (opens 29 May 2027), also at South Kensington, will examine unconventional uses of clay and ceramics in sculpture by British artists from the mid-1980s to the present day. Artists to be featured include Jacqueline Poncelet, Antony Gormley, Edmund de Waal, Richard Deacon and Clare Twomey.
Later in the year, the V&A will look to its applied art roots with Chintz (opens 18 September 2027), an exhibition focused on the legacy of the eponymous South Indian fabric, created more than four centuries ago by hand-drawing designs on cotton.
“This groundbreaking exhibition will explore the story of chintz through a radical new lens; not as a consumer product, but as a form of art alike to other forms of painting and drawing,” says a museum statement. The show will draw on the museum’s own collection and the holdings of the Kenya-born collector Karun Thakar.
Dress panel or bauw, made in coastal southeast India, 18th century
Karun Thakar Collection
At V&A Dundee in Scotland, a show dedicated to Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery (opens 26 March 2027) will look at how the revolutionary and anarchic “godmother of punk”, who died in 2022, incorporated jewellery as “a powerful and integral part of her designs”, also touching on her extensive history of jewellery design and connection with Scotland. In 2004, the V&A held an extensive retrospective dedicated to the fashion designer. The upcoming Dundee exhibition is created by Vivienne Westwood Ltd and produced by touring exhibition company Nomad Exhibitions.
