Gabion: From Here to Modernity: not only Daniel Libeskind but also Eva Jiricna will transform London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. 1/5

If you wondered what exactly Mark Jones has been doing in his first year as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, well, here it is. He has been hatching a £150m, 10-year project to transform the Old Lady of South Kensington into a museum that, having never quite got to grips with the late 20th century, will be more attuned to the 21st. Scarcely a corner of the 12-acre institution with its 11 miles of corridors will be left untouched. Even its once-celebrated “ace caff”, of 1980s Saatchi advertising notoriety, is to be moved.

Jones has arrived at a turning point in the V&A’s fortunes. The museum - for years derided as a basket case despite some highly original and successful exhibitions - is now riding high on vastly improved visitor numbers. For that, he has to thank his luckless predecessor, Alan Borg, for instigating the £31m new British Galleries, plus the Government-sponsored abolition of entrance charges. The removal of that millstone coincided exactly with the opening of the new galleries last November. The resulting surge in visitors over the past five months has increased its year-on-year total to 1.45m, up by more than half a million or 55 per cent. It was when the numbers dipped below 1m the previous year that alarm bells rang in Whitehall and Borg was on his way.