# Storage, Display and the Ninety Per Cent > Surveys since 1989 put eighty to ninety per cent of museum collections in storage. Open-storage buildings and digitisation change access, not the display ratio. > The Study - 2026-08-02 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/storage-display-and-the-ninety-per-cent/ ## Key points - A 2011 UNESCO and ICCROM survey put ninety per cent of museum collections in storage; a 1989 study of UK museums estimated seventy to eighty per cent for art museums and ninety per cent for archaeology. - A 2025 study in Collection and Curation found an average of seventy-four per cent stored, with visible storage in seventy-eight per cent of small museums but only seven per cent of large ones. - V&A East Storehouse opened on 31 May 2025 with more than 250,000 objects and an appointment system projected at 25,000 slots a year. - The Louvre's Lievin centre was built because underground storage of nearly 10,000 square metres could not be evacuated fast enough in a Seine flood. ## The ninety per cent figure has a source, and it is a survey ## The reasons are structural, not negligent ## Open storage has become a building type ## Digitisation changed what access means, and what it does not ## What the open-storage decade has actually changed Storage is not a failure of display; it is the condition of holding a collection larger than a building. The measured figures have barely moved since 1989 and there is no reason to expect them to, because the constraint is light, space and the shape of what museums collect rather than institutional will. What has moved is retrievability. A researcher can now find an object in a database published by the museum that holds it, and book it out of a warehouse in Stratford or Lievin without knowing anybody. That is the change worth counting, and the display percentage was never the number that mattered. ## Questions **What proportion of a museum collection is really on display?** Between roughly ten and thirty per cent, depending on the collection type and who is counting. UNESCO and ICCROM found ten per cent on display in 2011; a 2025 study in Collection and Curation found twenty-six per cent exhibited in galleries. Art museums sit at the higher end and archaeological museums at the lower, and any single figure should be cited with its survey. **Can a researcher get access to stored objects?** Increasingly, yes, and without a curatorial introduction. V&A East Storehouse takes bookings for up to five objects two weeks ahead, with a projected 25,000 slots a year. The Louvre's Lievin centre hosts external researchers, and the Depot in Rotterdam sells tickets into the storage compartments themselves. Older institutions still route requests through departmental curators. **Why did the Louvre build a storage centre 200 kilometres from Paris?** Flood risk. The palace sits on the Seine and holds works in underground storage of nearly 10,000 square metres that could not be evacuated in time. Lievin also consolidated holdings that had been dispersed across more than sixty locations, which had made systematic study and conservation planning almost impossible. ## Sources - [1] Corona, 'Stored collections of museums: an overview of how visible storage makes them accessible', Collection and Curation, 2025 (summarising UNESCO-ICCROM 2011, Keene et al. 2008 and Lord et al. 1989). - [2] The Art Newspaper, 'Pallets, not plinths: the V&A opens its vast storehouse to the public', 28 May 2025. - [3] Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Depot visitor information (object numbers, storage compartments and access model). - [4] Musee du Louvre, 'The Louvre Conservation Centre', Lievin (opening, capacity, flood rationale and researcher access). - [5] CODART, 'The Musee du Louvre Launches Online Collection Database and New Website', launched 29 March 2021 (more than 482,000 entries). - [6] Getty Research Institute, 'Publishing German Sales: A Look under the Hood of the Getty Provenance Index' (scale of digitised market records).