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Exhibitions and Galleries

From iconic galleries like Exploring Space to award-winning newer additions to the museum like Mathematics: The Winton Gallery our galleries make the museum an inspiring place to explore. We also open temporary exhibitions throughout the year covering a range of topics from science and technology to history and photography.

Dan Green, Content Developer, reflects on the incredible story of the Rugby Tuning Coil, one of the star objects of the Science Museum’s brand new Information Age gallery which opens in October. The aerial inductance coil from Rugby Radio Station will soon have a new home at the Science Museum – see it being installed in the video below. Measuring 6 metres high and resembling a series of giant spiders’ webs, this monumental coil is a powerful reminder of the invisible […]

Joshua Sofaer’s art installation The Rubbish Collection showcases the sometimes surprising materials that are created from the everyday rubbish produced by staff, contractors and visitors at the Science Museum. After documenting all the Museum’s waste for 30 days we have traced where it goes, and how it is recycled and transformed from rubbish back into valuable materials. For recyclable rubbish put into the Museum’s recycling bins, the first port of call in the journey is the Grundon Material Recovery Facility […]

The second phase of Joshua Sofaer’s The Rubbish Collection art installation has involved tracing the journeys of the Science Museum’s rubbish, to find out where it goes, and how it is processed. This has enabled us to work out what materials to bring back for display, and in what quantities, to represent 30 days’ worth of Science Museum waste. Rubbish leaves the museum via a variety of different companies but the vast majority is taken by Grundon Waste Management. It […]

Phase 1 – Mark Champkins, Science Museum Inventor-in-Residence Tuesday 15 July was the last day of sorting through Museum waste for The Rubbish Collection project, and my last chance to put in a shift filtering through discarded drinks bottles and leftover lunches. The project is fascinating. It aims to examine what constitutes the waste that passes through the Museum, where it would normally go, and what might be usefully recycled. The exhibition is split into two parts. The first involves […]

Update: You can see the full #UnlockingLovelock tour below Are you a fan of maverick scientist James Lovelock? To celebrate Lovelock’s 95th birthday, curator Alex Johnson conducted a live Twitter tour of our Unlocking Lovelock exhibition on Friday 25 July. During the tour of the exhibition, Alex shared the objects, letters, notes and drawings that reveal Lovelock’s extraordinary life and scientific career through the Science Museum’s Twitter account (@sciencemuseum) using the hashtag #UnlockingLovelock. [View the story “Lovelock Twitter Tour” on Storify] Unlocking Lovelock: […]

In the next of our series of posts linked to The Rubbish Collection, Sarah Harvey, Project Curator, talks to Neil Grundon, Deputy Chairman of Grundon Waste Management. Grundon is the Science Museum’s main waste contractor, handling all our general and recyclable waste – approximately 30 tonnes per month in total! The Museum’s waste either goes to their Colnbrook Materials Recovery Facility and transfer station, or if non-recyclable, to the Lakeside Energy from Waste plant. Lakeside produces around 37 Megawatts of electricity each […]

Today, to celebrate the anniversary of the first full-body MRI scan, we took a tour of our Mind Maps exhibition with curator Phil Loring. Phil shared his favourite objects and stories from the exhibition with our followers on Twitter.

In the next of our series of posts linked to The Rubbish Collection, Matt Moore, Head of Sustainable Development for the Science Museum Group, looks at how we measure and minimise the environmental impact of our exhibitions and galleries.

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