A gallery at World Museum Liverpool has closed its doors. The Dinosaur and Natural World gallery at World Museum Liverpool, which houses the museum's dinosaur, animal and habitats displays, will be closed from today (Monday, November 3) until February 2026. The gallery will reopen as 'Wild World'.
Ahead of the gallery's closure, Head of World Museum Liverpool Ashley Cooke told the ECHO: "It's one of the most loved and visited galleries in the museum and year-upon-year the gallery has continued to welcome and delight young visitors. It's been loved by many generations of local people who remember visiting it in their childhoods. You wander around the gallery and you can see grandparents talking to their grandchildren about how they remember it at their age. It's really special.
"But it's 60-years-old now, part of it dates to 1964, so it is one of our oldest galleries in National Museums Liverpool and the oldest in World Museum. The last time it had a refresh was 2004, and we did a little bit of work around 2020 but it's just really showing its age now. The gallery falls short of display and infrastructure standards that we expect of a national museum."
He added: "I'm very glad for this opportunity. What we've got to remember is that it is a refresh and not a major rebuild. It will still look very familiar. But a lot of it is very outdated. It's also the maintenance of the collection. The curators are thrilled actually, because it's not just a refreshed offer for the visitors but a chance to maintain the collections to a higher standard.
"So, we will be investing in new showcases, not only better presentation for visitors but the protection of the collections. They really vary in that gallery, from taxidermy to the beloved zebra and lion, to fossilised dinosaur bones. We've even got fossilised dinosaur droppings which is a real highlight for visitors of all ages. So it's about the protection of the collections really. So we're really thrilled to have this opportunity."
Below are pictures of how the gallery looked ahead of its closure. Read more about the gallery's "refresh" here.