the secret treasures of the V&A East Storehouse

In the final scene of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark, the camera cuts to the golden chest as it is placed inside a wooden storage crate, which is then nailed shut and padlocked. It’s wheeled through a cavernous warehouse full of identical boxes and slotted into a random row: safe from the enemy at last. The end credits roll.

“I’ve always, in my career, had that image in my mind,” says Tim Reeve, deputy director and COO of the Victoria and Albert…