I noticed in DC the Smithsonian natural history museum is redoing their dinosaur hall. But why is it taking 4 years ? It reopens in 2019. Anyone know the story on this long process?
They still have a small room with dinosaurs upstairs.
They got a big donation and are basically using it to completely re-do the entire exhibit. They are fixing things that are falling apart and are updating all of the exhibits to reflect our current understanding of dinosaurs, which has improved quite a bit in the last few decades.
Here’s some info:
Not questioning the need , just how long it is taking. I see it’s 5 years in total.
Five years seems a bit long to me, but three wouldn’t have surprised me.
Unlike other exhibitions, this isn’t a case where they can fabricate most of the exhibits off site and then bring them in and install them. Here they have to dismantle the existing exhibits; move them all out to storage (but it also mentions they will display some of the dinosaur skeletons elsewhere in the museum); gut and entirely renovate the exhibition hall itself; then remount the skeletons and install the rest of the exhibits. This is a much more complex process than if they were building a new exhibit from scratch.
Dinosaur skeletons are very complex things to mount, and I imagine there aren’t very many people qualified to do the job. Most likely they will only be able to work on a few skeletons at a time.
My guess is that much of this work is very labor intensive so it takes a long time. Depending on the size of the hall 5 years doesn’t sound that long for a complete remodel. I wonder if it would have cheaper, or at least faster if they had torn it down and started from the ground up.
Probably a union job too. 
As I said above, they did keep a small section of dinos upstairs. I guess if they did not do that there would have been a riot of kids.
The renovation of the dinosaur halls at the American Museum of Natural History took three years, from early 1992 to early 1995. This would have been much the same problem as at the National Museum, involving dismounting and remounting specimens and the renovation of the halls themselves.
The renovation of the entire fourth floor fossil exhibits was a gradual processes, with halls being closed and renovated in sequence.
For comparison, the Field Museum’s renovation of their fossil collection took about two years (April 2004–May 2006).
This is just an educated guess, but I imagine that pretty much all the people who touch actual artifacts have to be extremely qualified. Maybe not all PhDs but certainly lots of college. Even the most mundane work, cleaning items etc., is probably relegated to no less than undergrads. And it’s not only not the most glamorous work, it probably doesn’t pay incredibly well either.
Only qualified conservation experts would ever be allowed to touch those items. They are priceless and beloved. Undergrads would be lucky to be allowed to take pictures of them.
Source: worked in the conservation lab at the College of William & Mary (Colonial Williamsburg affiliated). In the undergrad lab section of Conservation we worked on grubby stuff from a Superfund site. Things so common, numerous, and in a poor state of preservation it literally didn’t matter if a student completely destroyed them by accident. Undergrads aren’t allowed anywhere near important historical museum pieces, much less extremely rare dinosaur skeletons.
I suspect there will substantial renovations to HVAC, electrical, fire suppression and other non-exhibit work.
That part of the exhibit was long over due for various reasons. And, there was a lot of pre-work involved, such as seismic studies of people walking and traffic outside, etc. Basically, that museum is in an old building that needs some rework and this is the time to do it.
There is also a lot of prep that has to be done with the existing exhibits that are of actual fossils. The original mounting methods were very barbaric and a lot of damage was done to them. Also, a fossil is a bone that has been mineralized, and is now a rock. Very heavy and very brittle.
I also imagine, that in addition to the T.Rex that they are getting, that they are also assembling some other dino’s as well. There has been a lot of good field work and categorizing of specimens not only within the US but abroad as well. So, what museums do now is that they look up what bones that they need, and then they can order a “copy” of that particular bone (or whatever) in order to complete their skeleton. In some instances, if they have the right, but not the left bones (like a shoulder blade) they’ll scan in the left, flip it, print it, work the print manually to make it smooth, and then make a mold and produce a copy(ies).
Following what I said above, a lot of museums have taken down the original fossils. Mainly due to the issues I mentioned before, as well as security issues from religious zealots who have damaged irreplaceable specimens. The copies they have on display are bout 99.999999% accurate and are more complete as they can order from the catalog the bones they need. In a way, this is nothing new, as back in the day, what they did was “make bones up” to fill in the gaps. It’s extremely rare to find a complete skeleton yet alone most of one. So, it’s not unusual for the display you see to be compromised of several if not over a dozen individual dinosaurs.
Oh, lastly, the studies of how the animals used to move has also increased the accuracy of the displays. So, the older ones with improper placement of bones are to be corrected. Those displays that we see are scientifically accurate.
To be precise, it’s taking five years:
Every time I’ve seen a large museum (or part of it) undergoing a major renovation, it was closed for years.
It seems they generally redo everything in these circumstances : newer safety and security norms, organization and circulation of the public, new conception of the exhibition, renovation of the building, restoration of the items exhibited, lighting, etc… Since closing them is so rare, they catch up with everything that ideally could/should have been done during the last 30 or 40 years, I guess.
I know nothing about this particular case, but the duration mentioned seems on par with what I’ve seen in other places and doesn’t surprise me at all.
ETA : out of curiosity and for comparison I checked how long lasted the renovation of the similar “great hall of evolution” of Paris museum of natural history : the planning phase lasted three years and the renovation itself also three years, during which it was closed, and it was only a part (although a major one) of the museum.