V&A shows £31m difference

"The past was a colourful place," opines Christopher Wilk, the man in charge of the Victoria and Albert Museum's £31 million programme to revamp the British Galleries, as he gestures at the plum and royal-blue backdrops to the opening Tudor section. "And we have decided to follow suit in our displays." (Colour is obviously the height of museum fashion; Tate Britain has gone down a similarly vivid route for its new historic hang.)

The V&A's past has also been colourful in recent years - perhaps too colourful for comfort. It's a long time since the museum even contemplated blowing its own trumpet. Debacles involving "an ace caff with quite a nice museum attached", mass sackings of experts and the attempt to update its image as a museum with quite a nice Spiral attached leap far more readily to mind.

But now the National Museum of Art and Design (the V&A's official title) is holding its collective breath. Next week's opening of the new British Galleries, on Thursday 22 November, the very day scheduled at the start of the project, really might mark a change in the way the museum is perceived - and this time for the better. What's more, from that day on the museum is to be free to the public once more. Things are definitely looking up.

The whole three-year project, Wilk explains, "is the largest the V&A has undertaken since its staff reinstalled the entire museum in 1947-52, after the evacuation of objects to safe storage during the Second World War". This was when the British Galleries were laid out - a display that remained largely untouched for nigh-on half a century.

By the Eighties it was looking decidedly shabby, while poor environmental conditions meant that anything fragile, such as the fabulous 17th century Melville bed or the newly acquired Stoke Edith silk embroidery, couldn't be displayed at all. These have now been returned in all their glory - and thanks to the new carbon-filtered airconditioning, the latter is actually on open view.

They join some 3,000 exhibits encapsulating the best of British design and craftsmanship between 1500 and 1900 (plus influential objects from abroad). The display divides into three main areas: Tudor and Stuart Britain (1500-1714), Georgian Britain (1714-1837) and Victorian Britain (1837-1901). Punctuating the porcelain, silver wine-coolers large enough to hold half-a-dozen babies, furniture, costumes, tapestries and other objets de luxe are entire rooms, many of them from London.

Two-thirds of the exhibits have never been shown in these galleries before - such as Canova's Three Graces. Among the brand-new additions are a William Chambers' chimneypiece from Gower House in Whitehall, the Fanelli bust of Charles I and James II's wedding suit. Wilk points out excitedly that the whole look of the galleries has changed because of the colour and texture of the textiles everywhere.

At 34,000 sq ft - a tenth of the whole museum space - the British Galleries are also bigger than before, the extra 25 per cent coming from converted adjoining storerooms (often of peculiar shape). Indeed, they form a museum within a museum: 15 galleries over two floors in the south-west part of the V&A. Entry is on the first floor, above the museum?s main entrance, via a handsome marble staircase on the left-hand side of the front hall. The scale of work involved in updating the galleries to 21st century standards has been colossal. It embraces both cutting-edge technology and a new way of thinking ? giving the visitor a context as well as information about individual objects. Hence the four themes covered in every section: The Defining Style, Who Led Taste? Fashionable Living and What Was New? The paraphernalia of behind-thescenes technology ? air conditioning, computer links, lighting ? has led to the floor being raised by half a metre. The latest fibre-optic lighting (no lightbulbs, just bunches of cords) is now in place, along with discreetly placed video points beside special objects, such as the Great Bed of Ware. Beyond the (double-glazed) windows along one side of the galleries lies the Cromwell Road, whose appalling level of pollution ? ?the highest in Britain, according to one survey,? Wilk declares ? makes conservation of the galleries? fragile contents a priority. IN line with current thinking, visiting the British Galleries has been made ?as immediate as possible?, with few barriers ? such as glass cases ? except when absolutely necessary. The stunning 1606 panelled room from Bromley-by-Bow used to be displayed behind glass. Now its surviving three walls are visible in all their glory, complete with salvaged 16th century floorboards. (There are specially purchased period floors for all the period rooms.) When not transforming the British Galleries, 46-year-old Christopher Wilk is chief curator of furniture, and in this capacity rebuilt the Frank Lloyd Wright office inside the V&A. A New Yorker by origin who still buys his clothes there (so much for British design), Wilk has been at the V&A for 13 years. He is quick-firing, gratifyingly enthusiastic and master of the snappy soundbite. ?The chest of drawers in the 17th century was as novel as a DVD player today,? he trills. The man who initiated and pushed through the project was the V&A?s former director, Alan Borg, whose legacy ? which many say is seriously undervalued ? is only now making itself felt. Funding was assured when the Heritage Lottery Fund announced a £16 million grant in summer 1998; however this was £6 million less than asked for, and the museum has battled to find the remainder. Even in September, there was still a £2.8 million shortfall. Generous donations have come from Vivien Duffield (who has supported the five education areas); the Weston family, the Wolfson Foundation, the Monument Trust; Mr and Mrs Edwin Davies; Sir Harry Djanogly; the Headley Trust and the Friends of the V&A. Founded in the wake of the 1851 Great Exhibition as a repository of good design ? and with probably the greatest collection of British and European decorative art in the world ? the Victoria and Albert Museum has struggled in recent years to draw the audience it deserves. (Visitor figures dipped below a million for the first time last year, down to 930,000 from almost 1.6 million in 1984-85.) This is partly laid at the door of admission charges ? introduced in 1996, 11 years after the V&A became the first national museum to bring in voluntary ones ? and partly because punters are confused as to the museum?s basic purpose. The reopening of the British Galleries should set things straight. They are at the heart of the V&A and set a context for the rest of the museum: a comprehensive history of affluent British taste ? the best money could buy at any one time. (?We are what we are,? says Wilk.) But you can make an even bigger claim: uniquely among UK museums, the galleries chart the very history of Britain and her rise ?from a position of relative international insignificance at the end of the Middle Ages,? as Wilk puts it, ?to one of huge international influence in Victoria?s reign, not simply in design, but also in Great Power politics and economics?. A lot is riding on the transformed galleries. Every department of the V&A has been involved. It?s just the kind of project to kindle both the morale of the staff and the imagination of the public. Fingers crossed.