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In 2014, the American Museum of Natural History for the first time announced Museum president Ellen V. Futter, who has plans for a major expansion dedicated to science, spoke of “the gap in the public’s understanding of science while at the same time having science as the basis for many of the most important issues.”
Now, in a transformed world climate change and the growing dangers of the coronavirus pandemic, That concern is more pressing than ever, Futter said, informing the museum’s construction of the $431 million Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation, with finer details announced Monday. winter.
“In a post-truth world with pandemics to human health and acute threats to the environment, it has only gotten more intense and urgent,” Futter said in an interview. “At the same time, there is a crisis in science literacy and education in this country and we are denying science.
“This is a building for our time,” said Futter of the 230,000-square-foot structure visibly taking shape along Columbus Avenue near West 79th Street. He added that “it touches on some of the biggest challenges that lie before us as a society, as a natural world.”
During a recent helmet tour of the six-story building with an undulating stone and glass exterior, architect Jeanne Gang he said the building was “about connections”. Architecturally, for example, Milford pink granite was used at the Central Park West entrance designed by John Russell Pope in the 1930s. The same stone is used on the west façade of the new project from a nearby quarry.
The project also highlights the various themes of the museum, from exhibition to education, and the links between its activities; from children to scientists; from dinosaurs and whales to insects and butterflies.
The building also aims to improve the physical circulation of the museum and create approximately 30 new connections in the 10 existing buildings, allowing visitors to flow more easily from one space to the next. “We’ve been dealing with dead ends for years,” Futter said. “They went.”
While the museum has always projected some kind of imposing, uncanny majesty, its new building is deliberately more porous, with floor-to-ceiling classroom windows that allow people to “look in and out,” said Futter, “it’s an invitation.”
The center’s transparency also helps the museum’s neighbors, some of whom were dissatisfied with the project’s initial entry into adjacent Theodore Roosevelt Park (its footprint was shrunk in response). A legal challenge brought against the Gilder Center by a community group, from work By the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division in 2019. A new landscape design of the park by Reed Hilderbrand adds seating and new plantings.
An expanded library also aims to attract more public interest with a new scholars’ reading room, an exhibition niche and learning “zones”, as well as extensive western views. This centralization of the library “puts the scientific side of the institution right up front,” Futter said.
About $340 million has been raised so far, including about $78 million from the city that owns the building and $17 million from the state, Futter said. Additional financing of the project is $90 million. Richard Gilder, a longtime donor and stockbroker to the museum, who passed away in 2020, contributed $50 million to the project. The center’s towering four-story courtyard will be named after financier and philanthropist Kenneth C. Griffin in honor of his $40 million gift to the project.
The new center will house about 12 percent of the museum’s collection, display objects on three floors, and provide views to storage areas where scientists and collection staff can collect, examine and work with samples.
“Collections are alive,” Gang said. “They are still used all the time.”
Showing that the natural history museum goes far beyond dioramas, Futter added that the new building emphasizes that academic work can lead to concrete solutions.
“Science is based on observation, testing, proving – scientists don’t make things up – and it has to be trusted,” he said. “Look what happened in this pandemic: Scientific research has found the means of vaccination.”
“Collections are evidence,” added Futter. “The evidence will be everywhere in this building before you.”
With exhibit design by Ralph Appelbaum Associates – in collaboration with the museum’s exhibit department – the building addition includes a 5,000 square foot Insectarium that will present live and digital displays; a monumental beehive; and a gallery that surrounds visitors with the sounds of Central Park bugs.
There is also a 3,000-square-foot vivarium, which is updated daily and continues throughout the year, which will feature free-flying butterflies and picture cards describing each species in flight.
360-degree Invisible Worlds Theater as big as a hockey rink designed by Tamschick Media+Space and Boris Micka Associates — will provide immersive images that widen the lens or bring you closer to nature: a rainforest, ocean, brain. Visitors’ movements will change screen projections.
“As a species, we don’t stand outside the environment – we influence it and it affects us,” Futter said. “It changes your understanding of where we fit in and we have responsibilities.”
Through architecture, Gang said, he wants to give visitors a sense of agency and luck as they follow their own curiosities – the ability to wander, meander, and explore for themselves.
“It’s about showing people where they can go and making it appealing,” Gang said, and “creating sights of discovery.”
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