The V&A is shipping David Bowie’s stage costumes, instruments, and doodles to Dundee this November because apparently dead rock stars deserve better museum real estate than anything happening in music right now. The exhibition will feature his iconic jumpsuits, a few guitars, and enough nostalgia to fill a medium-sized arena. It will be very moving. Nobody will buy a ticket to see a living artist’s work in the same city.
This is how culture works now: we’ve decided that a man who died in 2016 deserves a traveling retrospective while contemporary musicians compete for scraps on streaming platforms that pay them less than a cup of coffee per thousand plays. The logic is airtight. Bowie can’t perform anymore, so we immortalize him. Living artists can perform every night and still can’t afford rent.
Why do we celebrate the dead and ignore the living? Because the dead don’t ask for money, don’t release albums that flop, don’t remind us that art is actually difficult and unprofitable. Bowie’s legacy is locked in. His influence is calculable. His commercial value is guaranteed. A living musician might release something challenging or unmarketable, which is unforgivable.
The exhibition opens in November. Tickets will sell out. A dozen contemporary artists in Dundee will continue playing to half-empty rooms, waiting for the day they die so their old stage clothes finally matter to an institution.