A YEAR after the successful re-launch of Scotland's national museum after a major revamp, the institution is to launch eight new galleries at a cost of nearly £12 million.
The next phase of a master-plan to transform the National Museum of Scotland (NMS) in Edinburgh has now been given a £4.85m boost by the Heritage Lottery Fund. This will go some way to funding the creation of the new galleries, which will showcase the NMS's Science and Technology and European Art and Design collections.
More than two million people have visited the National Museum on Chambers Street since its redevelopment, but that makeover was only the first phase of a plan which will include the eight new galleries, due to be opened in 2016, and a new Egyptian gallery after they are completed.
The new science and art galleries will allow for 75% more objects to go on display, showing the achievements of scientists, engineers, artist and designers from the history of Scotland and the world.
Displays will show objects such as the world's first pneumatic tyre invented by John Boyd Dunlop in 1888, Dolly the Sheep, as well as items relating to the discovery of beta blockers by Sir James Black, wave, wind and steam power, the Higg's Boson, computing and the industrial revolution.
It will also include the Enigma machine, the German code machine cracked by British intelligence officers in the Second World War, and the Nobel medal of Sir James Black, one of Scotland's greatest scientists who won the Prize for Medicine in 1988 for his research into drug development.
The new galleries, which will be 2800 square metres in size, will replace the current art and industry, Egyptian and European rooms.
The management of the NMS are confident they can raise the further £7m needed to complete the new galleries, with funding being sought from private companies, charities, trusts and wealthy individuals.
Dr Gordon Rintoul, director of the NMS, said "The grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund will enable us to move forward in creating a further eight galleries, opening up access for everybody to our outstanding national collections of science and European art."
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