The Natural History Museum has received a further £20 million in government funding for its new collections and research centre.
The museum will move 28 million specimens to the new collections, digitisation and research centre at Thames Valley Science Park in partnership with the University of Reading.
The facility will house a third of the museum’s collection, 28 million specimens. Additionally, 445,000 library objects are moving to Reading.
The sustainable building will include digitisation and imaging suites, state-of-the-art molecular and analytical laboratories and cryogenic facilities. It is expected to be completed in 2027 and operational by 2031.
Housed at the new centre will be the museum’s collections of mammals and non-insect invertebrates, and the molecular collections, micropalaeontology and ocean bottom sediments.
The Natural History Museum has already received £182m in government funding. Doug Gurr, the museum’s director, said the move will allow it to “safely store its irreplaceable collections for generations to come”.
The centre “will help find solutions to the planetary emergency using collections and research to answer the big questions of today including maintaining food security, improving biodiversity and addressing climate change,” said Gurr.
Vice-chancellor of the University of Reading, Professor Robert Van de Noort, said the venue “will open up innovative research opportunities for academics from Reading, and indeed all around the world”.
Museum to move 28 million specimens
In addition, it will accelerate the museum’s digitisation project. Currently, only six percent of the Natural History Museum’s collection, around 5.4 million specimens, has been digitised.
The project will also improve the visitor experience at the Natural History Museum. Several gallery spaces used to store specimens will be restored and made accessible to the public.
The total collections from 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums in 28 countries has been mapped, with these institutions holding 1.1 billion objects between them.
Elsewhere, the V&A has acquired a huge 80,000-piece archive of material from the estate of David Bowie, which will go on display in a new research centre at V&A East.
Images: Natural History Museum
