Science Museum's £150m future vision
The Science Museum is to get a gold-plated roof-top space travel gallery and a huge glass "brain" bulging from one of its walls in a £150million modernisation.
Plans for the biggest upheaval for 60 years were unveiled today by director Professor Chris Rapley.
The bold blue-print - Museum of the Future - will consign to history the drab Sixties-style galleries, such as the little-visited halls devoted to agriculture and shipping.
The main changes, due to be completed by 2014, are:
A new climate change gallery that will break with museum tradition by backing the case that human activity is warming the planet.
A cavernous roof-top cosmology gallery called SkySpace. It will have a gold roof to link the museum visually with other landmarks in Kensington's "Albertopolis" such as the Royal Albert Hall and Albert Memorial.
A reworking of the existing Flight and Making the Modern World central galleries and two new galleries, Making Modern Communications and Making Modern Science.
A dramatic illuminated glass feature, called The Beacon, on the Exhibition Road façade representing the ideas and energy trying to "burst out of the building".
New entrances on Exhibition Road, which is to be partly pedestrianised, to ease visitor congestion at the main entrance.
A new storage building at Wroughton in Wiltshire to house the 94 per cent of artefacts for which there is no room at the main museum.
Professor Rapley said he hoped to engage visitors on how they can change their lives to help tackle the challenges facing the world, particularly climate change.
He also wants the museum to play an active role in inspiring the scientists, designers and technologists who will drive Britain's economic growth.
He said: "I see the museum as an agent of social change, not just a big box in which to put heritage objects."
Professor Rapley said he hoped to raise the money through private sector sponsorship, government grants and contributions from bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund.
He admitted that he faced a huge challenge raising finance in the current economic climate, although he insisted the plans would not be scaled back.
He said: "It was very unfortunate for us that the credit crunch really hit at the end of last year.
"But I decided we could either enter our second century with a whimper or say, 'No, we think what we're doing is hugely important to the UK and whole world and we need to be ambitious.'
"The Government has demonstrated it can spend trillions in rescuing the banking system. What we're asking for is relatively trivial by comparison, although I recognise they are big sums."
The museum is also launching celebrations of its centenary as an independent body on 26 June, although it can trace its roots back to the Great Exhibition of 1851.
To mark the birthday the museum's curators have nominated the 10 "icon exhibits" that they believe have had most impact in shaping today's society ranging from the first steam engine to the Apollo 10 command module, and want visitors to vote for the all-time number one.
