What exhibits will be in the new Milwaukee Public Museum? When does it open? Here's what we know.
The Milwaukee Public Museum, currently at 800 W. Wells St., will break ground on a new building later this year at the northeast corner of Sixth and McKinley streets. The new museum is expected to open in 2026.
Between March and May of this year, MPM administrators and designers from Thinc Design made several announcements about what the exhibit galleries will look like in the new museum. While decisions are still being made about final exhibit designs, MPM President and CEO Ellen Censky estimates they've announced about half of the new museum's details. Here's what we know so far.
Will the new museum be bigger?
One reason for the new building is that the current building isn't equipped to safely store the museum's collection of more than 4 million items. For that reason, in addition to the new building, MPM will house some of its collections in a 50,000-square-foot offsite storage facility.
But in terms of exhibit space, the new museum will be smaller, from 150,000 square feet in the original to 80,000 square feet in the new building. Some of the collections and artifacts that are usually in storage will be rotated into the new museum's temporary exhibit space.
What will the themes of the exhibit galleries be?
The new museum will have five permanent exhibit galleries.
The Time Travel exhibit gallery, looking at the planet's deep past, including when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
The Milwaukee Revealed exhibit gallery, on the neighborhoods and commercial districts that have defined Milwaukee, past and present.
The Wisconsin Journey exhibit gallery, focusing on the geological and cultural history of different parts of the state.
The Living in a Dynamic World exhibit gallery, on the cultures of different areas across the world.
The Rainforest exhibit gallery, with a focus on the biodiversity, ecology and cultural impact of tropical rainforests.
The new museum also will have a planetarium, a live butterfly vivarium, a rooftop terrace and two mixing zones. The mixing zones will be spaces dedicated to temporary exhibits, programming and rotating displays of artifacts and collections that are otherwise kept in storage.
Which exhibits will come over to the new museum?
The Muskrat Group diorama, now on the museum's first floor, will be in the new museum's mixing zones area. The exhibit, designed in 1890 by taxidermist Carl Akeley, is considered to be one of the nation's first habitat dioramas — a method of exhibiting taxidermy animals in true-to-life settings.
The rest of the exhibits that have been announced for the new museum won't be exact replicas of the current museum's exhibits, but many will repurpose artifacts and favorite items displayed in the current museum.
The immersive Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit will be transformed into the immersive Milwaukee Revealed exhibit; the new exhibit will maintain elements like the twilight setting and the ability to walk through re-creations of Milwaukee streets and into buildings. And the mannequin known as Granny will be there.
The Hebior Mammoth, now in the museum's entrance, will be part of an exhibit exploring the hunting of large mammals in the new museum's Time Travel gallery.
The Torosaur skull will be part of an exhibit in the new museum's Time Travel gallery, showing two dinosaurs fighting. The current museum's T. Rex will also be part of that exhibit.
The Silurian reef exhibit, a diorama behind glass in the current museum, will be reimagined as an immersive exhibit that people can walk through in the Time Travel gallery.
The famous rattlesnake button, now something that kids discover in the Bison Hunt exhibit, will be hidden in a new exhibit in the deserts hall of the Living in a Dynamic World exhibit gallery.
Other familiar items expected to be displayed in the new museum include Samson the gorilla, Timba the elephant, Simba the lion, the honey bear family, reindeer, walruses and many migratory bird specimens. The Milwaukee Revealed exhibit will also feature the penny farthing-bicycle and Schloemer automobile that are now in the Streets of Old Milwaukee, and a Japanese incense burner that is in the museum's Sense of Wonder exhibit.
Although MPM administrators have not made final decisions on other items that will be displayed in the new museum, they have said that everything that is part of the museum's collections will either be part of the new museum's exhibits, part of the new museum's rotating exhibits or permanently stored.
How much time is left to visit the current museum?
The plan is to open the new museum in the second half of 2026. It is anticipated that the current museum will remain open for most of the next few years, with a short period of time in 2026 when both museums will be closed to finish the transfer of the museum's artifacts from the current museum to the new one.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Public Museum is moving to a larger building. What we know.
