#368: Overhaul for Natural History Museum

A recent report in The Guardian gave some information on the latest developments at the Natural History Museum, which has spent a lot of time and money overhauling its outside spaces recently.

Now it's moving to the inside and exploring how its work is presented.

It has announced plans to overhaul four galleries - including the iconic dinosaur exhibit - as they add a permanent display on “climate messaging”.

The Museum will raise £150 million to revamp their programming and join “a global mission to create 100 million advocates for the planet”.

The new exhibition, Fixing Our Broken Planet, will have the express aim of “nudging” visitors to change their behaviour.

The piece quotes the Director Doug Gurr:

Until recently, Gurr told the Guardian, the museum had seen itself as a “passive observer … our job was to collect, to conserve, to research, to display”.

“[Then] we stepped back a bit and said: ‘Well, hang on, if your subject matter is planet Earth and it’s under that much threat, you’ve got to do something about it. If you want the sporting analogy: how do you get off the sidelines and get on the pitch?”

In 2020 the museum declared a planetary emergency, and Gurr said the redevelopment was part of its continuing response. “The best contribution we can make is to create what we call ‘advocates for the planet’. And what that really means is: how do you inspire people at scale to care about nature and to care enough to want to do something about it?

“Of course, we still want people to have a brilliant, fun family day out. But if you can come out of that being a little bit more interested in nature and a little bit more aware of some of the challenges, you’re a bit more likely to want to do something about it.”

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license