MILWAUKEE — We now have a first look at the new Time Travel gallery coming to the Milwaukee Public Museum's new building!
The museum said it will be releasing renderingsand details on the new exhibits over the next few months, with the first renderings, released Tuesday.
The renderings depict the new Time Travel gallery which is dedicated to exploring the past, including when dinosaurs roamed the earth. MPM said there will be exhibits focused on three of the planet's geological chapters: the Paleozoic Era, Mesozoic Era, and Cenozoic Era.
The Palezoic Era
The Palezoic Hall will feature exhibits that look at the planetary conditions that supported evolution between 540 and 250 million years ago. There will be an immersive exhibit, called the Silurian Reef, which will show the shallow waters of the Silurian seas.
There are more than 122,000 fossils in the exhibit and an interactive portion where visitors can touch replicas of ancient sea creatures.
There will also be an exhibit, called Cambrian Trackway, showcasing a 2,600-pound slab of sandstone discovered in central Wisconsin. It contains animal tracks that are half a billion years old.
The Mesozoic Era
Fans of the Mesozoic Era will be happy to know the gallery at the new museum will feature a favorite from the current exhibit. The Torosaur Clash, a diorama of two Torosaurs locked in battle, will be making its way over to the new facility.
The museum said at the new facility, visitors will feel like they're a part of the clash.
"The exhibit is inspired by a puncture wound on the Torosaur skeleton that, through scientific research, was determined to be caused by another Torosaur. Because of that wound, we can better understand the behavior of the species of the Cretaceous period – like how they fought over resources or mates – and what they left behind,” said Oronde Wright, Senior Exhibition Designer at Thinc Design and a lead designer on the Future Museum project.
The Cenozoic Era
The Curtis L. and Jean E. Carter Cenozoic Hall will allow visitors to explore the evolution of mammals through fossils of saber-toothed cars and other creatures of the era. A portion of this exhibit will be the center of the Time Travel Gallery: the Hebior Mammoth Hunt.
This piece allows visitors to come face to face with the skeleton of a woolly mammoth. Above it, there's a bluff with human hunters waiting to strike.
“It’s a story of predator/prey dynamics, coevolution, adaptation and human ingenuity,” said Dr. Censky.
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The new building will be five stories tall with about 200,000 square feet of space. The museum says the outside texture will be reminiscent of the ancient sea stacks at Mill Bluff State Park in Camp Douglass.
The first floor will feature an open commons atrium inspired by the coming together of the Milwaukee, Kinnickinnic and Menomonee rivers.
In addition to the new building, the museum will have a 50,000-square-foot storage facility for additional collections not on display.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for late 2023. Residents will be able to go inside in 2026, the museum says.
The museum's current building is at 800 W. Wells St.
Key donors noted by the museum are:
- Anonymous donors,
- JoAnn & Richard Beightol,
- Lynn & Douglas Brengel,
- Bucyrus Foundation,
- Melitta S. & Joan M. Pick Charitable Trust
