More work is to be carried out at Chambers Street following the award of £4.84 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The National Museum of Scotland is set to begin work on its £14.1 million project to create ten new galleries.
A programme of gallery closures will enable objects to be decanted into storage, making way for the redesign of existing spaces and their transformation into ten galleries displaying National Museums Scotland’s internationally important collections of Science and Technology and Art and Design.
From today the Looking East gallery will close to visitors while museum staff carefully remove objects from display, pack and move them into storage at the purpose built National Museums Collection Centre in the north of the city.
Over the coming months the following schedule of gallery closures will be rolled out to accommodate the redevelopment:
Gallery Date of Closure
European Styles 4 August 2014
Shaping our World 4 August 2014
Ancient Egypt 1 September 2014
Ships and Music 1 September 2014
Communicate 1 September 2014
Art and Industry 15 September 2014
Connect 29 September 2014
The National Museum of Scotland remains open throughout the redevelopment with plenty to see and do throughout its galleries of Natural Science, World Cultures and Scottish history and archaeology.
There is a packed programme of exhibitions and activities over the summer including the outstanding Ming: The Golden Empireexhibition bringing Ming artefacts to Edinburgh from the Nanjing Museum in China and Common Cause: Commonwealth Scots and the Great War marking the experience of the Scottish diaspora during the First World War.
During the summer festivals there will be live music, opera and performance in the galleries and, inspired by and using objects from our World Cultures collections, acclaimed contemporary Australian artist Danie Mellor will present new work that explores his own indigenous and Scottish heritage.
The two-year refurbishment is the third stage of an ambitious £80 million Masterplan to restore the much loved Victorian building to its former grandeur, reveal the remarkable treasures of National Museums Scotland’s collections and create inspiring visitor experiences. The new galleries will open in 2016.
The second phase was completed and opened to the public in the summer of 2011, presenting 16 new galleries exploring the Natural World and World Cultures. To date the transformed Museum has achieved national and international recognition with well over 5.5 million visitors crossing the threshold so far, making it the most visited attraction outside London for the past three years.
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