Presenting ‘Life, as we know it’ 

What a ride! It’s been about seven years in the making, but we have just put the finishing touches to our major redisplay project – Life, as we know it – which fully opened last week. If you haven’t been to the Museum in a while, now is a great time to come. 

I have been lucky enough to have worked on this project from the very beginning, but the achievement is that of many, many people across the Museum and beyond. Over the coming weeks we are going to share, on this blog, stories from some of the skilled people who made it happen: model-makers, artists, scientists, set-builders, designers, animators, conservators – the list goes on and on. 

The video above gives a taster of all this. For those of us involved, it is also a nice trip down memory lane. How did we find and pin hundreds of arthropods in rings of concentric size, all presided over by a gigantic Japanese Spider Crab? Whose idea was it to suspend an articulated dinosaur upside down, sinking to its final resting place? 

To be able to step back now and see all the new displays together is a real treat. Between them, the 48 new showcases, containing 24 new displays, show us specimen-led examples of how the natural world works, taking in big ideas in evolution, ecosystems, biodiversity, and the history of the planet. 

Thanks to everyone who has worked on what is the biggest single redisplay in the Museum’s 165-year history. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have! 

By Scott Billings, Life, As We Know It Redisplay Project Manager