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The Science Museum has been handed a enormous wad of cash and it’s planning to use it transform its largest gallery space.
Thanks to a whopping eight-figure donation from the Serum Institute of India (the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer), the museum’s 20-year-old Making the Modern World gallery will be transformed and re-open in 2028 as Ages of Invention: The Serum Institute Gallery.
We don’t know that exact amount of money that’s been injected into the museum, but it’s apparently the largest international donation in its history.
At the moment, the Making of the Modern World gallery has six different zones presenting some iconic and everyday items that have shaped how we live today. Among the fascinating stuff on the display, there’s the first Apple computer, a porcelain bowl salvaged from Hiroshima, penicillin from Ian Fleming’s lab, the world's oldest surviving steam locomotive, ‘Puffing Billy’, and Tracy, one of the world’s first transgenic sheep.
The refurb is being designed by Lawson Ward Studio. Led by architects Hannah Lawson and Georgina Ward (who are also currently working with the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Wallace Collection and the Natural History Museum), the new and improved gallery will ‘draw on the existing architectural features of the space, utilising natural light, the double height and the largest gallery space in the museum’. Like the Making of the Modern World gallery, it’ll span 250 years of inventions and, don’t worry, the artefacts that are on display right now won’t be going anywhere.
Sir Ian Blatchford, Director and Chief Executive of the Science Museum Group, said: ‘Through our ambitious new Ages of Invention: The Serum Institute Gallery we will create the most significant display of objects from the history of science anywhere in the world. Visitors will be able to journey through 250 years of innovation and explore the scientific ideas shaping our lives today.’
The announcement comes not long after the Science Museum unveiled its brand new Space! gallery. You can read about our first impression of that here.
Did you see that the V&A’s new museum in east London finally has an official opening date?
Plus: the world’s first museum of youth culture will open in Camden next month.
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