Downtown Milwaukee’s new Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin is still under construction – but a building tour provides a preview of highlights for its opening next year.
Those include a three-story display of some of the better-known large attractions from the Milwaukee Public Museum, which the new museum is replacing.
That glassed display showcase, running from the new building’s third through fifth floors, will feature such exhibits as the reconstructed mastodon skeleton, which helps illustrate Wisconsin’s Ice Age history; the re-creation of Samson the gorilla, one of the Milwaukee County Zoo’s most beloved animals, and the European Village’s copper doors.
That’s according to museum President and CEO Ellen Censky, who led the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other news outlets on a May 14 tour.
Censky said it will be a nice upgrade for Samson, now a stand-alone exhibit on the museum’s first floor.
“He’ll have neighbors,” Censky said.
The new museum, under construction at North Sixth Street and West McKinley Avenue, is to open by June 2027. It’s replacing the dilapidated current museum, 800 W. Wells St.
Another tour highlight is the fifth-floor vivarium, where butterflies will have free reign within a glassy area that features a 15-foot high ceiling and lots of natural light.
“I think the butterflies will have the best view of Milwaukee,” Censky said.
That top floor also has a rooftop terrace where visitors can enjoy the views of downtown.
Other features include “reflection lounges,” areas where visitors can duck out of exhibits, which have more subdued lighting, to connect with daylight, and glassy areas where the museum’s collections and labs can be observed.
“We have so much more than can ever be exhibited,” Censky said. “We want it to be much more active, and not tucked-away space.”
Also noteworthy: Milwaukee Museum Center signs are at two of the entrances.
That was part of the museum’s agreement with Milwaukee County, which owns the collections. A new nonprofit owns the future museum.
Censky said in March the museum has reached nearly 90% of the campaign’s original goal.
The museum has raised more than $212 million toward its initial $240 million goal, Censky told members of a County Board committee. That includes 47 gifts of $1 million and higher, as well as $45 million from the county and $40 million from the state.
She also said inflation and tariffs had raised costs of the project, which includes increasing the museum’s endowment.
After finding ways to cut construction costs, the museum is now seeking 6% more, for a new total of around $254 million, Censky said in March. Along with private donations, the museum is seeking federal grants.
Censky told reporters during the tour museum officials keep “plugging away” on the project, which includes shipping items to a new off-site storage facility that opened this spring.
“It’s now coming to life,” she said about the future museum. “It’s very rewarding.”
Tom Daykin can be emailed at tdaykin@jrn.com and followed on Instagram, Bluesky, X and Facebook.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A sneak peak of Milwaukee’s Nature & Culture Museum set for 2027 opening
Reporting by Tom Daykin, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
