The National Maritime Museum is about to get bigger. Much bigger. A development project that’s nearly finished is seeing the museum gain four new galleries, adding 1,000m2 of space in the Museum’s East Wing, previously closed to visitors, into public use.

The work is expanding the size of the museum by 40 percent.

They’ve now set the opening date for the four galleries, which will show off over 1,000 objects, to be the 20th September.

The £12.6 million gallery expansion will cover British and European exploration from the late-fifteenth century through to the present day, and will be broken into four themes – Tudor and Stuart Seafarers, Pacific Encounters, Polar Worlds and Sea Things.

Furthermore, the galleries will highlight how Britain’s relationship with the sea and its growing maritime power and ambitions shaped the country and impacted the world we live in today.

The project has been timed to be completed in mid-2018, to allow the Museum to take a lead role in Cook 250 – the commemoration of Lieutenant James Cook’s 1768 departure down the Thames in HM Bark Endeavour on the first of his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific.

Artists’ impression of one of the new gallerys © Casson Mann

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One comment
  1. ChrisC says:

    I’m sure the East Wing was previously used for exhibitions. I remember one in the Spanish Armada on the 400th Anniversary.

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