National History Museum to close indefinitely for refurbishment works
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The Natural History Museum is to close in September for at least a number of years to facilitate major refurbishment works.
The museum in Dublin has been open since the 1850s and is one of the country's most popular tourist sites.
It will close on September 2 and there is no date for completion of the works as of yet.
In the meantime, a new ‘Dead Zoo Lab’ will be created in spring 2025 at the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) at Collins Barracks.
This is to allow the public to visit some of their favourite specimens while the works are ongoing.
In the coming months, teams will move the historic artefacts from the Merrion Street home of the National History Museum to the new site at Collins Barracks.
The refurbishment project is being led by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the National Development Plan.
Architects Fitzgerald Kavanagh and Partners have been appointed to lead the design team for the works.
The project extends to the entire building and included in the scope are:
- A comprehensive refurbishment of the museum that will meet best practice sustainability and environmental control standards.
- Improved collections care, collections management and stewardship.
- Addressing accessibility issues including lifts, internal staircases and upper balcony areas.
- Creating additional learning, exhibition and multi-functional spaces within the historic building.
- Protecting, restoring and conserving the historic building fabric and improving health and safety, including fire safety.
In 2010, the museum had to close the upper galleries due to their unsuitability for safe visitor access.
In 2020, it closed temporarily to facilitate the removal of the whale skeletons suspended from the roof and the packing and removal of 20,000 specimens, and to install an internal platform and environmental seal.
This internal platform structure is protecting the building and its contents, while also enabling initial investigative works on the roof and informing the overall project scope more accurately.
Since the museum reopened in 2022, only the ground floor has been open to the public.
This next phase will see the complete closure to the public from September, to enable the remaining 10,000 specimens to be carefully wrapped up and removed from the building, followed by the development of the design and planning for the extensive conservation and refurbishment works.