Mark Jones: A creative approach to the restoration of an institution

The Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum talks about his plans for its future

As an institution, the Victoria and Albert Museum is often regarded as a dusty repository of porcelain and antique lace, but its new director, Mark Jones, has a rather more dynamic purpose in mind: to create a powerhouse of modern design.

With the grand Kensington institution celebrating its 150th anniversary, Mr Jones wishes the public to associate the museum with the objects of everyday life. To help him achieve his goal, he has enlisted the support of some of the major names among Britain's creative industries.

The museum's150th birthday party last week was attended by the designers Ron Arad, Rodney Fitch and Habitat's Tom Dixon, the architects Terry Farrell and Daniel Libeskind, the artists Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley and fashion stars such as Selina Blow and the husband-and-wife team Clements Ribeiro.

The party's colourful guests were proof that the museum has a promising future as well as a glorious past. "The V&A is a wonderful collection of historical material, but it is also a museum that is very much engaged with what is happening now," he says.

The party also marked the first anniversary of Mr Jones's arrival, succeeding Alan Borg as director. Tall, slightly patrician, with a diffident manner, he says he has enjoyed his first year "on balance". He speaks, thoughtfully and precisely, of the "huge privilege" of working in such a place and how satisfying it is to see visitors enjoying themselves.

Mr Jones, 51, married with four children, says he cannot imagine wanting to work anywhere else. His dedication extends to finding time for the academic research that is the bedrock of museums while juggling budgets and handling administration. He is writing a paper on art and the Temperance movement when we meet in his office; the corridor outside is lined with paintings.

He feels the public might be forgiven for missing the connection between the V&A's imposing collections and the aesthetic appeal of their kettles, sofas or cardigans. Mr Jones wants to highlight that link.

"Henry Cole, the founder, regarded the primary purpose of the V&A as being to improve standards of design but also the aspiration of the consumer," he says. "These two things have to work together."

He concedes that Henry Cole's museum dismally failed to ensure the worldwide manufacturing success predicted for Britain in the heady days of the mid-19th century. But the future for British design today strikes him as rosier.

"In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Britain has become internationally recognised as a place with lots of interesting architecture and design and contemporary art," he says.

"And people here are much more interested in contemporary design than I think they have been for a very long time. Look at the design of new flats. By and large they are being sold as distinctively contemporary. Fifteen to 20 years ago, nobody wanted to touch contemporary with a barge pole."

To claim a place for the V&A in this design resurgence might have been tricky when he took over a year ago. Then, the V&A was widely viewed as having lost its way.

The proposal for a controversial Spiral extension, designed by Daniel Libeskind, was regarded as an expensive detraction from the principal problem of sorting out the museum's extensive collections, getting them displayed properly and winning back visitors whose numbers had slumped dramatically since voluntary (later compulsory) charges were introduced in 1985.

Much of the blame for the perceived drift was heaped upon Dr Borg, but Mr Jones says his predecessor was, in many ways, unfairly castigated for failing to get a grip. For instance, the new £31m British Galleries, opened last November to widespread praise, were planned and financed under the Borg regime.

When Mr Jones arrived in London from Edinburgh, where as director of the National Museums of Scotland, he had triumphantly overseen a controversial extension to the Museum of Scotland, he had been led to expect a disillusioned as well as down-at-heel institution. But he generously claims the situation was nowhere near as bad as depicted. "It was a museum that was much better run and more effective than one might have thought," he says.

Nonetheless, some changes were vital. After months during which the V&A had looked likely to resist the Government's plea to scrap admission charges because of the cost, he immediately announced he would restore free admission. He did so in November, resulting in a 55 per cent increase in visitors over the previous financial year.

He went back to the plans for the Spiral and devised a way of making it an integrated part of a better-organised museum, a contemporary space for the best of the museum's contemporary collections, instead of something of a white elephant.

He estimated it would cost £150m to transform the museum, including £75m for the Spiral, but declared it feasible to do so in a decade. By then, he expects visitors to be able to find their way around every part of the V&A's 12 acres and enjoy the objects they find there. Neither is easily managed at present, and Mr Jones says that is an enormous shame.

The museum has, for instance, outstanding collections of material from India, Japan and China. "It seems to me hugely worthwhile to open visitors' eyes to the richness and diversity and historical depth of these cultures," he says. "These things are so beautiful. The history of these great civilisations is so important. They are major players on the world stage that we ought to know about.

"And many people in Britain have cultural or family links, so interpretation of these cultures is really important. What the British Galleries have shown is that you can learn a lot about the past through objects."

What is sad is that the collections available for future generations will be less complete than those bequeathed by the V&A's 19th and early 20th-century guardians, whose astute purchases of the best of contemporary design included designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Tiffany that are now worth a fortune. Today, the V&A has many generous donations but the acquisitions budget is limited.

Yet financially, the V&A is facing none of the problems of, say, the British Museum, which is laying off staff. "Museums feel if they had a bit more money, they could do substantially better," he says. "Our financial situation isn't perfect, but we don't face the very difficult situation of the British Museum.

"Lots of extra visitors means additional costs such as more cleaners, and more wear and tear on interactive exhibitions, but it does mean more income from the shop and café." He adds: "I wouldn't say they balance each other out exactly."

He is full of praise for the Government's initiative on free admission and believes it will eventually increase attendance by 40 per cent at the national galleries and museums, which were given extra funding to drop charges. The increase could be as high as 50 per cent at the V&A, thanks to the planned improvements.

But he finds it baffling that, in general, politicians do not really seem to understand that museums are popular. "If you look at the league table of the top 10 or 20 tourist attractions, pretty well half of them are big museums and galleries. That seems to me like a lot of people who are interested."

Mr Jones will not be drawn on whether a revitalised V&A could capture the imagination of the public as the Tate Modern has done, or return to its early golden days when it inspired numerous American cities to found museums in its image. He shies away from extravagant statements likely to make him a hostage to fortune, but he does believe that the V&A can do some things better than any other museum.

"After the opening of the British Galleries, French magazines were referring to the V&A as the world's greatest museum of decorative arts," he says with pride. He may not, in all honesty, believe the V&A deserves that description today. But it is a title to live up to in the decade to come.

The CV

Education: Eton and Worcester College, Oxford.

Career:

* 1974 to 1990: Courtauld Institute.

* 1990-92: British Museum department of coins and medals where triumphs included highly successful 'fakes' exhibition. * 1992-2001: Director of the National Museums of Scotland, where he oversaw construction of a modernist extension to the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

* Director of the V&A since 1 May 2001.