95 Percent of Museums’ Collections Are Hidden from View. Is “Open Storage” a Real Solution—or a Cop-Out?

It is a symptom of museums’ perpetually acquisitive nature that a majority of global museum collections—up to 95 percent, according to some estimates—remains in storage. A number of high-profile institutions are addressing this surplus by providing public views into their storage facilities: While “visible storage” has been around since the 80s, projects like The Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (opened in 2021) and V&A East Storehouse in Lond