V&A unveils new details on David Bowie Centre including curations by The Last Dinner Party and Nile Rodgers

The David Bowie Centre features an exclusive guest-curated display by multiple award-winning musician, producer, songwriter and David Bowie-collaborator, Nile Rodgers, and Brit Award-winning indie rock band, The Last Dinner Party.

Nile Rodgers' selections include a Peter Hall suit worn by Bowie during the Serious Moonlight tour for the Let’s Dance album, as well as personal correspondence between the pair about the 1993 Black Tie White Noise album, and behind-the-scenes photographs of studio time.

Speaking of his curation, Nile Rodgers, said: “My creative life with David Bowie provided the greatest success of his incredible career, but our friendship was just as rewarding. Our bond was built on a love of the music that had both made and saved our lives.”

The Last Dinner Party have selected objects mostly from the 1970s that illustrate how Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists to ‘stand up for themselves and their music’, including set lists from the Station to Station tour, handwritten lyrics for "Win" from the 1974 album Young Americans, and the Bowie's Electronic Music Studios (EMS) synthesiser user manual for the synth which was used on Low, Heroes and Lodger.

“David Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists like us to stand up for ourselves. Bowie is a constant source of inspiration to us,” they explain. “When we first started developing ideas for TLDP, we took a similar approach to Bowie developing his Station to Station album – we had a notebook and would write words we wanted to associate with the band. It was such a thrill to explore Bowie’s archive, and see first-hand the process that went into his world-building and how he created a sense of community and belonging for those that felt like outcasts or alienated – something that’s really important to us in our work too.”

The David Bowie archive was acquired by the V&A through the generosity of the David Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group. It joins over 1,000 archives from creative luminaries including Vivien Leigh, the House of Worth, and The Glastonbury Festival Archive.