Last summer an email arrived which caused momentary alarm, as the Grant Museum was announcing its closure. Fortunately, the second sentence explained that the closure was to be temporary and the collection will move to a new larger venue just across the road.
Anyone who had visited the Grant Museum in the past would appreciate the benefits of more space as it was a quite lovely, yet very small cramped little room.
This week, the place reopens to the general public again, with a late-night on Tuesday and a special event on Saturday.
Although I haven’t been inside yet – going on Thursday – I have seen some photos from their Facebook page, and they all paint a reassuring picture of a museum that has retained its general appearance of an old Victorian collection of animals in jars and bones on shelves with a limited nod to modernity in the form of the ever-ubiquitous iPad dotted around the place to fill the interactive requirement.
Photo by The Grant Museum
If you want to beat me to see the place, then they will open to the public on Tuesday (15th March) from 1pm to 8pm (thereafter Mon-Fri 1pm-5pm except for events).
There is also a Fossil Hunting event this coming Saturday between 10am-4pm.
Take this chance to visit the brand new Grant Museum with an amazing opportunity to sieve through our genuine fossil-rich sediment from a time when London was patrolled by sharks and rays. Find a 50 million year old shark’s tooth and take it home! Come to the Grant Museum of Zoology and see what you can find in a day of free hands-on activities for the whole family.
The new address is on the corner of Gower St and University St.
As an aside, the usual opportunity for me to visit the museum is when they hold a lecture or show an old B&W sci-fi film in the lecture hall, and then decamped to the museum afterwards for a glass of wine.
I do hope that tradition is continuing!
I’ve had a little look around. I think you’ll love the way they’ve done the iPads, Ian. I know you’re not a fan of interactives (and nor, usually, am I), but these are cleverly mixed in to the augment the exhibits, rather than distract from them. The unobtrusive labelling of certain specimens with twitter hashtags and bar codes is another great idea. The aim, I think, is to get people talking about individual specimens online. Never seen that done before.
Even without the new tech, the new museum was (in my opinion) much better laid out and spacious than the old venue, while retaining the scholarly air.