Good evening

Did you know that, on average, most museums have less than 5% of their collections on display at any one time? For the V&A, the world’s leading museum of art and design, this equates to more than two million precious artefacts locked away in warehouses and basements that rarely see the light of day.

This week saw the opening of a brand new outpost of the V&A in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London. In attempting to open up more of the museum’s vast collection to the public, the V&A East Storehouse is boldly rewriting the rulebook about what a museum can and should be. Guardian writer Joanne O’Connor was one of the first to get a preview of this exhilarating new space. “Gone are the glass cases, white walls and carefully curated exhibits of a traditional museum space,” she writes. “Instead, visitors are invited to look behind the scenes of a working museum, to wander among open shelves stacked high with deliriously eclectic objects and to peer into the workshops where conservators are at work. The effect is part Ikea showroom, part Victorian cabinet of curiosities.”

Perhaps the most radical innovation is the museum’s new “order an object” service, which allows anyone to order up any five objects from the collection in advance – for free – to examine them at close quarters (under the watchful eye of a member of museum staff). A 1950s pink taffeta Balenciaga evening gown is the most requested item so far.

The Storehouse is the latest addition to the new East Bank cultural quarter which is taking shape in the former Olympic Park. An outpost of the Sadler’s Wells dance theatre opened in February and another V&A East museum will follow next year. We take a closer look at what this exciting new neighbourhood has to offer visitors.