York Museums Trust

Yorkshire Museum

This last year had been a year of preparation for the major refurbishment project of the Yorkshire Museum that will take place in 2010. The Letting in the Light project is concentrated on the redisplay of the archaeology and natural science collections.

We have appointed the designers who are well on with the plans and much of the £2 million we need has been secured. We are very grateful to the Monument Trust, The Garfield Weston Foundation, The DCMS/Wolfson Fund and the Foyle Foundation for their support of the project. The Letting in the Light project will see three main displays: Romans, Medieval and Extinct. We will also be offering visitors an exciting and visual introduction to the History of York through a new audio visual immersive programme which will take place in the Tempest Anderson Hall. The Learning Level will also be opening up the historic library that was created over the years by the members of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society (YPS) who founded the Yorkshire Museum and Gardens. Volunteers from the YPS have sorted out the historic library, cataloguing for the first time the 42,000 volumes in the library.

The work of the Museum has carried on whilst the staff prepare for the closure in November 2009. New screens have been introduced into the displays with Time Travellers interpreting Roman hairstyles, medieval building techniques and prehistoric butchery through our community archaeology project.

Museum Gardens

We are beginning to talk about the Museum Gardens as our fifth site in recognition of their growing importance in their learning and pleasure potential. Although inextricably linked to the Yorkshire Museum, our ambitions for the gardens require a separate team with a different set of expertise.

We have now appointed a Gardens Manager to oversee the day to day management of the gardens as well as setting a vision for their horticultural potential. The impact is already being seen and commented on by our visitors and we are planning more investment in the gardens in future years. Certainly our long established plans to extend the garden to behind York Art Gallery are still in our sights. Discussions with the City Council and the University of York are encouraging.

We have appointed the architects DSDHA to help us plan the creation of new public spaces at the back of the gallery to connect the Museum Gardens with Exhibition Square so that the whole connectivity of that area is improved.

The changes to the planting have included the fern garden near Manor Lane and the prairie beds at the Museum Street entrance. Improvement to the quality of the soil and the grass has resulted in a general lift to the look of the gardens.