Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Science myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.London’s Natural History Museum is planning a £550mn transformation over the next eight years, restoring Victorian galleries which have been off-limits to the public for decades to their “former glory”. The historic South Kensington building will reopen two current storage rooms while four existing halls are to be fully refurbished, the museum is to announce on Thursday. “Our revitalised museum will be the heart of a global mission to create 100mn advocates for the planet, powered by our scientists’ work to find solutions to the planetary emergency,” said museum director Doug Gurr. The museum will also extend its outreach programme online and through events at schools and other venues across the UK and internationally.Gurr has been vocal in his advocacy for action on the planetary emergency since he took charge of the Natural History Museum in 2020. He was previously country manager of Amazon UK and president of Amazon China. “The enormous focus on the climate emergency really matters but is not sufficient,” he told the Financial Times. “Tackling the biodiversity crisis is essential too — and that is even more complex than action on climate change.”The museum’s corporate sponsorship has recently steered clear of energy companies with large fossil fuel interests and, therefore, avoided controversies that have affected the Science Museum and British Museum. “We have turned down quite significant gifts,” said Gurr. “We will talk to everyone but there are some people from whom we would find it difficult to accept funding.”Space will be created for new galleries by moving about 28mn specimens — 35 per cent of the scientific collection — to a £200mn storage and research centre at Thames Valley Science Park near Reading, south-east England. Its construction will begin early in 2025.“Our additional public spaces will be restored to their former glory, showing again the original Victorian architecture,” said Gurr. “They will add 16 per cent to our gallery area.”One gallery, last accessible to visitors 20 years ago, currently houses a vast collection of insects, particularly beetles, that will move to better storage facilities in Thames Valley. After renovation it will display animals that live on land and in the air.The second reopened space will be the old herbarium, closed to the public since 1948. It will be fitted out as a public reading room combining exhibits and resource areas, including access to the digital collections and physical objects.Refurbishment of the dinosaur and children’s galleries is planned, while the 1930s whale hall will house an exhibition on the oceans.The first of four existing visitor spaces scheduled for renovation will open next spring, called Fixing Our Broken Planet. “We’ll have four zones exploring the food we eat, the energy we consume, the stuff we use and our health,” said Meg MacDonald, senior project manager. “Objects on display will be chosen by our scientists to get people talking about the planetary emergency and what they can do about it.”Anyone who has visited the museum recently during school holidays and half term, when there can be long queues to enter the building and its crowded galleries, might question the ambition to add another 1mn people a year, Gurr said. But he insisted: “We are confident that we can do it while improving the visitor experience,” by adding new public spaces and improving flow through the museum. Two striking gardens, which opened in July on the museum’s south and west sides focusing on evolution and biodiversity, had already helped to achieve this, he added. The government will contribute most of the £400mn already committed to the £550mn capital spending programme, while the museum aims to raise an additional £150mn from philanthropists and businesses. It obtains around 45 per cent of its total income, which stood at £135mn in 2023-24, from government and 55 per cent from other sources, including commercial activities such as cafés, gift shop, venue hire, sponsorship and scientific consultancy.
