The construction phase will last 15 months, with the whole scheme costing £14.7 million. Northern Ireland’s Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) is providing up to £9.2 million of this, and the Heritage Lottery Fund £4.5 million.
This investment will provide a modern museum with a dramatic ground floor display, titled the Hall of Wonders, showcasing some of the museum’s iconic objects. There will be increased gallery space and new interactive discovery areas for art, history and science subjects.
Northern Ireland Culture Minister Edwin Poots was present at the launch of the building. “The reinvented museum will meet the demands of an increasingly diverse and sophisticated museum audience,” he said. “I hope the museum will become a centre for sharing knowledge about Northern Ireland’s rich history and I look forward to its completion.”
“I am grateful for the Minister’s and HLF’s support and investment in this much needed refurbishment,” said Margaret Elliott, Chair of National Museums Northern Ireland. “The project is well underway; the first phase has been completed with the decant of the collections and staff from the building. This represents a major logistical exercise involving the cataloguing, tagging and movement of some 800,000 objects to new storage.”
An outreach programme and touring exhibitions are taking the museum’s collections into the community while the museum is closed.
