THE Ashmolean Museum’s new director is aiming to ensure at least one million visitors a year come through the door.

Dr Alexander Sturgis said he was delighted to take one of “the great museum jobs” and now wanted to boost visitor numbers to the Beaumont Street institution.

As the director of Bath’s Holburne Museum, Dr Sturgis was in charge of an award-winning transformation of the building, with its public space doubled and a six-fold increase in visitor numbers.

He is now getting to grips with his new role after one of the biggest expansions in the Ashmolean’s 332-year history.

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Dr Sturgis, 51, has succeeded Prof Christopher Brown, the man who oversaw the £61m reconstruction programme at the Ashmolean, which delivered 39 new galleries, 100 per cent more display space, a new education centre and Oxford’s first rooftop restaurant.

Father-of-three Dr Sturgis said: “For me the great excitement is the collections here and getting to know them better.

“I am discovering brilliant people under one roof with different areas of expertise.

“This is one of the great museum jobs. It is significantly bigger than Bath, like multiplying everything by 10.”

In the year following its reopening in November 2009 Ashmolean visitor numbers shot up to 1.2 million but have subsequently dropped back to 850,000.

Dr Sturgis said his aim was to make one million visitors a year the norm.

He added: “Most university buildings are shut. So it is right to regard the Ashmolean as the open door of the university for the city and internationally.”

After leaving Oxford in 1985, Dr Sturgis took a PhD in art history at The Courtauld Institute in London, doing his doctorate on Gothic cathedrals and liturgy.

He went on to spend 15 years at the National Gallery in London, including as exhibitions and programmes curator from 1999 to 2005, before becoming director of the Holburne.

Oxford Mail:

Dr Alexander Sturgis takes a stroll around the Ashmolean Museum, where he is the 19th director in the museum’s 332-year history.

Dr Sturgis scrapped admission charges at the Holburne for the first time in its long history, allowing it to join the ranks of other free-to-enter university museums like the Ashmolean and Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester.

He now becomes the 19th director of the Ashmolean in its 332-year history.

An exhibition of underwater archaeological finds from the coast of Sicily will be coming soon, while he hopes to build on the extraordinary success of the Live Friday events, which regularly attract 5,000 people.

Dr Sturgis said there were no immediate plans for any new building work.

He added: “There is a courtyard which holds the possibility of a further expansion phase at some point in the future.”