Gus Casely-Hayford OBE speaks to the development of the V&A East Museum and V&A East Storehouse in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, set to open in 2024 and 2025. Casely-Hayford provides the vision for how diverse communities will have immersive opportunities to engage with and be in relation with museum collections, contemporary artworks, and archives.

Gus Casely-Hayford OBE is a scholar, professor, curator, and director of the V&A East in London, UK, set to open in 2025. As an art historian who writes, lectures, and broadcasts widely on African culture, he is also Professor of Practice at SOAS in the Centre of African Studies. Casely-Hayford is the former director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, and well known for his major BBC television series The Lost Kingdoms of Africa, using new archaeological and anthropological research to explore the pre-colonial history of some of Africa’s most important kingdoms.

The Uncontainable Collections Research Project is funded in part through the support of the Elizabeth L. Gordon Art Program, a program of the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation and administered by the Ontario Arts Foundation.