The Natural History Museum has reopened museums access to the Nature and Us gallery, a room that had been closed to the public for 83 years. Visitors can now enter the space on the second floor near the cross section of a giant sequoia tree.
The gallery explores the museum’s changing relationship with the natural world through 50 remarkable objects. A barrier cuts across the room at the halfway mark, so only half of the gallery is open now.
Natural History Museum Nature and Us
The room was once used as an osteology gallery. During World War II, the Natural History Museum’s old herbarium was damaged by a bomb, and the room was repurposed in 1943 as the new herbarium.
That history explains why the space stayed out of public view for so long. The reopening turns a working room back into a visitor space, while the museum keeps one side closed until the rest of the gallery is ready.
Half of the gallery
Only half of the gallery is open now, and the full space is scheduled to open to the public in 2029. The Natural History Museum has also pledged to open a new gallery a year until its 150th birthday in 2031.
Next year, the old Creepy Crawlies gallery will become a new children’s gallery. For visitors, the immediate change is simple: a sealed room is no longer sealed, but the route through it still stops at the barrier until the rest opens.
