16 Aug 2018
US National Museum of Natural History’s Fossil Hall set for reopening
BY Luke Cloherty
Kirk Johnson, museum director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, has announced its David H. Koch Hall of Fossils will reopen on 8 June 2019.
Colloquially known as Fossil Hall, the room was closed for a US$129m (€113.2m, £101.4m) renovation in 2014.
The project has returned the museum’s wing, which first opened in 1910, to its original architectural majesty. High ceilings, skylights and ornate moulding that had all been hidden have been restored.
The hall’s main exhibition will feature dinosaurs, plants and insects. Some of the artefacts have never been displayed. Its mission with the exhibition is to tell the story of life on Earth. A number of interactive displays will also provide visual scientific learning.
Johnson said the room is "the most visited room in the most visited natural history museum in the world".
The room’s focal point will be a T-Rex about to bite a triceratops pinned under its foot. The 66 million-year-old fossil was discovered in 1988 in Montana and is on loan from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Johnson added: "(The Fossil Hall) will open in 326 days, not that I'm counting, and between now and then we have dozens of crates to open, hundreds of bones to articulate and many, many exhibits to install."
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