The Hermitage is planning a huge expansion that will create the largest galleries for 19th Century art in the world. “In recent years, the world’s greatest museums have been expanding and reinventing themselves in response to mass tourism and a heightened interest in the visual arts. We have seen the creation of the Grand Louvre, the Tate Modern conversion of Bankside power station and a vast new building for MOMA in New York. Now it is the turn of the Hermitage.”