The Natural History Museum in London has announced a major transformation programme that it says will see it “transform from a catalogue of natural history to a catalyst for change” in response to the climate emergency.
Plans to renovate the museum's famous Victorian building and develop new research and storage facilities are driven by the goal of turning visitors into “advocates for the planet,” the museum announced Thursday..
The museum will overhaul four existing galleries, including the hugely popular dinosaur gallery, while also reopening two long-closed exhibit spaces, including the Old Herbarium, which hasn't been open to the public since 1948.
One of them will be the home of a new permanent exhibit that museum director Doug Gurr said will have the clearest climate message the museum has ever presented. Titled “Mending Our Broken Planet,” the exhibit has the explicit goal of “inspired” visitors to change their behavior, he said.
The new exhibition space will be freed up through the creation of a dedicated storage, research and digitisation centre at Thames Valley Science Park near Reading, which will see more than a third of the museum's vast natural history collection moved to it from its current site, which is “unsuitable and unsustainable”.
The museum said this was to “allow for better management and easier sharing of data with scientists around the world who are seeking solutions to problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss and food security.”
Mr Gurr told the Guardian that until recently the museum had positioned itself as a “passive observer”, saying: “Our job was to collect, conserve, study and exhibit.”
“[Then] We stepped back a little and said, “Hold on a second. If your subject is the Earth and it's under such threat, then something has to be done. To use a sports analogy, how do you get off the sidelines and onto the pitch?”
In 2020, the museum declared a planetary emergency, and Gurr said the redevelopment is part of an ongoing response: “The best contribution we can make is to create what we call 'Earth Champions,' and what that really means is, how do we inspire large groups of people to care about nature, to care enough about it that they want to do something about it?”
“Obviously we want people to have a great, fun day out with their families, but if they come away from that experience with a bit more interest in nature, a bit more awareness of some of the challenges then maybe they're a bit more likely to want to do something about it.”
The South Kensington renovation is due to be completed in time for the museum's 150th anniversary in 2031. Most of the funding will come from the government. Already committed More than £200 million will be spent on new collections and research centres, and a further £155 million will go towards a museum-led programme to digitise the UK's natural science collections. In addition, museums have announced plans to raise an additional £150 million from philanthropic and commercial sponsors.
Gurr said the museum is open to “talking to anyone” about potential sponsors, but will not accept donations from companies it deems unacceptable partners based on their environmental track record.
“we, [a potential sponsor]”We will weigh the actions and statements,” he said.
Mr Gurr said the museum had turned down “significant” donations in the past and “did not feel it was appropriate to accept them at this time because we felt that there was hypocrisy in some of the donations we received and we could not call on people to change their behaviour and save the planet.”
He did not comment on the positions of other institutions such as the Science Museum or the British Museum, which have highly controversial funding relationships with energy companies, but said: “It is true that we do not receive funding from fossil fuel companies.”
The museum recently redeveloped its outdoor space into two new gardens focusing on evolution and biodiversity, and Gurr said he hopes to expand on that. Education ProgramEncourage schools to use their unique outdoor spaces to enhance climate and nature education.
