LONDON.- The V&A will complete the first phase of its £120 million transformation a year from now when it opens its £30 million new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries in November 2009. The ten new galleries, occupying an entire wing of the museum, will display some of the V&A’s most remarkable treasures such as the Becket casket and sculptures by Renaissance masters Giambologna and Donatello. They are the largest project since the opening of the British Galleries in 2001 and will mark nine years of rapid modernisation under the museum’s ambitious Future Plan.

Next year will also see the completion of a number of other galleries. In March, new Theatre and Performance Galleries will open. The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Gallery will open in April displaying around 60 pieces of Asian Buddhist Sculpture. The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Galleries, opening in June, will show highlights from the Gilbert Collection.

In September 2009, for the first time in a century, the V&A will redisplay 3000 objects from its ceramics collection, the greatest and largest in the world. The seven new Ceramics Galleries will make the V&A the world’s leading resource for international ceramics.

The first phase of Future Plan is costing £120 million. Around 70% of the Museum’s gallery space will have been redisplayed between the years 2000 and 2009. The Museum has worked with some of the UK’s most innovative architects and designers to present its collections in beautiful and contemporary new displays while renewing and restoring much of the building’s original architecture.

Future Plan got underway with the opening of the British Galleries. Since then the number of visitors to the V&A has more than doubled and there have been 18 new openings including the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Sculpture Galleries (March 2006), The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art (July 2006) and the William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery (May 2008).

As part of Future Plan, architect Eva Jiricna remodelled the Grand Entrance giving it a contemporary feel while Kim Wilkie redesigned the John Madjeski Garden, providing a tranquil focal point at the heart of the Museum. Visitor services have been updated, a new shop has opened, and a café in the original Victorian refreshment rooms opened in 2006 with a modern extension. The V&A this year opened the Sackler Centre for arts education providing one of the most advanced museum education facilities in the country.