Alistair Hardaker | Imagez: Bristol Museum / Simon Fenn
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery secures over £300,000 from the DCMS/Wolfson fund to redesign its Wildlife Galleries, reopening in summer 2027.
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery is to redesign its British and World Wildlife Galleries, adding digital citizen science features and space for community projects, after securing more than £300,000 from the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund.
The galleries on the upper first floor will be overhauled for the first major work in decades. The redesign is expected to bring together the museum’s historic collections with new art pieces, community perspectives and information about behind-the-scenes museum work.
Supported by an additional grant from the Bristol Naturalists’ Society, the redesign will include digital interactive features, allowing visitors to act as citizen scientists, contributing to research into how Bristol’s wildlife has changed over the past 200 years.
There will also be space for projects created by artists and local community groups, with visitors able to share responses to themes including their relationship with the natural world, its care and responsibility.
The new displays will explore where the museum’s wildlife objects and specimens come from and how they are linked to Bristol’s past as part of the British Empire. According to the museum, the displays will show how these histories still affect present-day conversations about justice for people, animals and the natural world.
Philip Walker, head of culture and creative industries at Bristol Museums, said the redesigned galleries “will offer new ways for people to connect with the natural world, explore our place within it, and experience the extraordinary wonder and diversity of wildlife”.
Its British and World Wildlife Galleries will close from 24 August 2026 and reopen in summer 2027. The entire upper first floor, which also includes the Geology, Minerals and Dinosaur galleries, will close in September 2026 and reopen for the October school half-term holidays. Familiar objects including Alfred the Gorilla and the Romany Wagon will remain in the refreshed displays.
The refurbishment will also include the restoration of original display cases, energy-efficient lighting, refreshed interiors and multisensory displays.
The panels for the redesigned galleries will be shaped by research and community consultation, building on the museum’s 2019 Extinction Voices project with local schoolchildren and the Extinction Silences project delivered with Rising Arts Agency between 2022 and 2025.
Further support has come from the Art Fund’s Reimagine Grant, the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute, Bristol Museums Development Trust and the Friends of Bristol Museums.
