Declaring a planetary emergency, London’s Natural History Museum has announced an updated mission – to create advocates for the planet, and to find solutions for climate instability and biodiversity loss – and as it turns out, a new, state-of-the-art dinosaur gallery is part of the plan.
The museum released its long-term strategy in conjunction with its scientists’ attendance at last week’s annual meeting in Davos, and it charts a course for the next 11 years, taking the venerable institution up to its 150th anniversary in South Kensington. New galleries, displays, and events will look to the future, from a “Fantastic Beasts” exhibition coming this May to an interactive children’s gallery to, yes, a world-class dinosaur gallery.
“Children are the future stewards and custodians of our planet, so helping them to understand the challenges of the future is one of the museum’s most important roles,” officials said in a press release. “No other creatures thrill, fascinate and engage children with the natural world quite like dinosaurs. Their immense diversity, adaptation to the changing world they inhabited, long history and eventual extinction provide powerful parallels to the biodiversity of life on Earth today.”
While an exact location for the new space is still to be determined, the Natural History Museum plans to acquire new specimens and highlight the role of climate change in the ancient creatures’ ultimate extinction, relaying a message of constant planetary change – and emphasising the impact one person can make.
According to the museum’s figures, attendance has increased from some 230,000 visitors per year in 1881, when the building opened, to 5.4 million per year today, though its public gallery spaces have only grown by 50%. Its plans for the next decade include a partnership across the UK will tackle urban biodiversity loss, and the museum’s five-acre gardens will be turned into a centre for urban wildlife research and conservation; a new flagship science and digitisation centre will be created to house the museum’s 80-million-specimen collection; and it will work to downsize its carbon footprint, setting a science-based reduction target in line with the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5°C global warming trajectory – the first museum in the world to do so.
“In this time of unprecedented threat, we need an unprecedented global response,” museum director Sir Michael Dixon said in a press release. “Our strategy is built around our vision of a future where people and planet thrive. Our ethos is one of hope that by working together we can change the current path.”
For more information, visit nhm.ac.uk.
