David Bowie: On Tour Opens at V&A Dundee With His Ziggy Guitar, Berlin Keys and Blackstar Lyrics

David Bowie: On Tour opened at V&A Dundee on Wednesday, November 4, with around 100 pieces from the V&A's David Bowie archive, many of them never on public display before, and runs until Monday, February 15, 2027. Bowie's estate calls it the first time the archive has been shown at this size outside London, and Dundee is the opening stop of a tour the V&A is taking around the UK.

The headline objects are the personal ones. Bowie's own announcement lists a guitar he played in the Ziggy Stardust era, the keys to his Berlin apartment and his handwritten lyrics for his final studio album, ★ (Blackstar), alongside costumes, instruments, photography and keepsakes. The V&A's page adds Polaroids from make-up and costume fittings, unrealised scripts, performance notes and costumes from The Next Day and ★ (Blackstar).

V&A Dundee

Four sections, from Ziggy to ★

The show is split in four. "Bowie Through a Lens" covers how photography built his image, with work by Terry O'Neill, Mick Rock, Sukita and Brian Ward. "All the Somebody People" takes four eras: Ziggy Stardust, with Freddie Burretti and Kansai Yamamoto costumes and the cut-up notes behind the album; Berlin, with the keys to his apartment at Hauptstraße 155, concept art for the cover of Low and the koto he played on "Moss Garden"; Let's Dance, with a Serious Moonlight tour set design shown for the first time; and ★ (Blackstar), with a hand-painted costume from the "Lazarus" video.

"Hooked to the Silver Screen" runs from his storyboards and the Natasha Korniloff costume for the "Ashes to Ashes" video to the clapperboard from The Man Who Fell to Earth, Polaroids of his costume fittings for Jareth in Labyrinth, and a script for an episode of The Simpsons that he turned down. The last section, "I Can't Give Everything Away", is about what he chose to keep, among it his first instrument, the Grafton alto saxophone his father bought him in 1961.

V&A Dundee

Why Dundee, and where it goes next

Bowie's post points to a sold-out Ziggy Stardust concert at Dundee's Caird Hall in 1973, attended by 2,500 fans, and V&A Dundee says the city has been renamed Bowie Town until February 15, with venues across it running Bowie-themed events. Tickets are £6 to £11 on the V&A's page; Bowie's post gives adults at £10 plus a £1 donation, with V&A and V&A Dundee members and anyone 18 and under free, booked in advance. The tour then moves to Showtown in Blackpool (June to September 2027), the Bowes Museum in County Durham (October 2027 to January 2028), the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull (February to May 2028) and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (June to September 2028).

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Taking the archive on the road answers the standing complaint about national collections: that you have to go to London to see them. Opening in a city with its own Bowie gig history gives the tour a local story rather than a travelling-show feel, and the never-shown pieces, the Ziggy-era guitar and the Serious Moonlight set design among them, give people who have seen Bowie's costumes before a reason to go again. For anyone outside Scotland, the dates through 2028 are the ones to note.