Music is not something we usually expect to find in a museum. If we want to understand music, we put on our headphones and turn up the volume. Yet the V&A has long been making the case that music belongs in the museum just as much as a painting or a piece of furniture. The recently opened David Bowie Centre at V&A East Storehouse is perhaps the most ambitious expression of this, giving visitors direct access to an archive in its entirety. But it raises a question worth sitting with: what can an archive actually offer that a recording cannot?
It was within this broader conversation that I began my PhD placement at the V&A, cataloguing the archive of British musician PJ Harvey. Over the past months, I have been working closely with archival materials that trace more than three decades of her creative life. From countless press cuttings, bizarre fan art, and unexpected correspondence, the archive opens up a new way of understanding Harvey’s artistry and position within the world of popular music.
Born in 1969 amidst the rolling hills and farmland of Dorset, Polly Jean Harvey began her music career in the late 1980s as a member of the band Automatic Dlamini, before stepping out under the name PJ Harvey and rising to prominence in the early 1990s with her debut albums Dry (1992) and Rid of Me (1993). She is the first (and only!) artist to win the Mercury Prize twice: for her albums Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) and Let England Shake (2011). But Harvey’s artistry extends far beyond her solo work. As well as musical collaborations with artists such as Nick Cave and Tricky, she has composed for theatre and television, and published two collections of poetry: The Hollow of the Hand (2015) and Orlam (2022).
As I began working through the archive, I quickly realised that PJ Harvey’s career resists easy categorisation. Throughout her career, Harvey has consistently refused to let her work be defined in any single way, and the archive reflects that in every box you open. This became particularly clear to me as I was cataloguing press materials. No artist makes music in a vacuum, and the reviews, interviews, cartoons and magazine features spanning more than three decades of Harvey’s career offer a fascinating window into how the world was receiving, and at times struggling to keep up with, her work in real time.
This cartoon, published in NME Magazine on 29 May 1993, perfectly reflects that. PJ Harvey is surrounded by figures that are questioning her artistic choices: Is she conforming to or confronting femininity? Is she being serious or ironic by wearing a dress or growing out her hair? The cartoon is wry and funny, but also shows how every artistic choice that Harvey made was picked apart and argued over. Nevertheless, she never gave into these debates: she let the music speak for itself.
A music archive can also offer something more intimate: a peek behind the curtain of an artist’s creative process. Harvey’s album Let England Shake (2011), a haunting meditation on war and national identity, is a good example. The archive reveals the extraordinary amount of research that went into the album: books on war and conflict, research into army marches, and a beautifully framed portrait of British nurse Edith Cavell that stood on Harvey’s piano as she worked. But the archive also sheds light on how Harvey brought the album to life on stage. A set of cue cards with ‘points of concentration’, given to Harvey by theatre director Ian Rickson, were used during the Let England Shake tour as prompts before taking to the stage. They might be small in size, but speak volumes about the intentionality and depth that Harvey brought to every performance.
Correspondence is perhaps one of the most revealing categories in any archive, precisely because it shows that an archive is never just about one person. It offers a window into the friendships, collaborations and relationships that shaped their creative life. I was quite surprised when I found a touching letter by Jeff Buckley, sent to PJ Harvey in late 1996/early 1997. In it, Buckley shares his plans for recording his new album and lets Harvey in on a secret: his obsession with fresh ginger tea. It is warm, funny and deeply human. Sadly, Buckley passed away in May 1997, giving the letter a quietly heartbreaking quality in hindsight, and a reminder of just how many unexpected stories a single archive can hold.
Visitors can explore the collection in person by scheduling advance appointments with the Archives team. Theatre and Performance Archives are available to view at V&A East Storehouse on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, between 10.00 – 17.00.
