AN AMBITIOUS £5.5m plan to revamp a city gallery has been unveiled.

Modern Art Oxford has put forward proposals to extensively remodel its Pembroke Street premises, as part of a plan to double visitor numbers to more than 200,000 a year.

The scheme has been publicly supported by the BBC’s arts editor, Will Gompertz, and Mark Haddon, both of whom live in North Oxford.

The work would add a large new auditorium space, refurbished cafe, courtyard and visitor facilities, revamped entrances and a six-storey staircase and lift, opening up higher floors to the public for the first time.

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If approved by Oxford City Council, work could begin in 2017, following the exhibition space’s 50th anniversary celebrations next year.

Gallery director Paul Hobson said: “We see this as the perfect moment to embark on an ambitious redevelopment of this historic building, to ensure the gallery’s commitment to the audiences and artists of the future.”

It is hoped that the work could be complete by 2018 and the gallery is understood to be in talks with several venues over holding a series of one-off events across the city while it is closed.

London-based firm RISE, which worked on the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, has been brought in to manage the project.

The bulk of it is to be funded by a £3.5m grant from Arts Council England last year. The gallery said it had also received £400,000 in private donations and would seek to raise the other £1.6m over the next 18 months.

Public consultation on the scheme runs until September 9.

The gallery, which has occupied the building since 1966, said the project would overhaul the exhibition spaces, while also preserve its “essential industrial character”.