Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation

The spectacular new facility will add exhibition galleries, state-of-the-art classrooms, an immersive theater, and a redesigned library, revealing more of the Museum’s scientific collections and linking 10 Museum buildings to improve visitor flow throughout the campus.

Inside the Gilder Center

The Kenneth C. Griffin Exploration Atrium, a soaring, four-story civic space, will serve as the gateway to the Gilder Center and open into Theodore Roosevelt Park. 

Insectarium

The Susan and Peter J. Solomon Family Insectarium, a 5,000-square-foot gallery, will introduce visitors to the extraordinary variety of Earth’s most diverse and abundant animal groups through large-scale models, interactive exhibits, and live insects, with special sections on insects of New York City and human health.

A 2017 rendering of the Insectarium on the first floor of the Gilder Center, a place for family and general learning as well as for structured school visits by groups from every grade. 
Courtesy of Ralph Appelbaum Associates

Vivarium

The Davis Family Butterfly Vivarium will be a new, 3,000-square-foot year-round living exhibit featuring free-flying butterflies in a variety of “environments” and opportunities to use interactive microscopes, discover the butterfly life cycle, and interact with butterfly experts.

The Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation will include the new year-round, 3,000-square-foot Davis Family Butterfly Vivarium, a permanent exhibition where visitors can mingle with free-flying butterflies.
Neoscape, Inc./© AMNH

Collections Core

This rendering shows one level of the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Collections Core, which will include three floors of exhibitions with floor-to-ceiling arrays will represent every area of the Museum’s collections in vertebrate and invertebrate biology, geology, anthropology, and archaeology.
Neoscape Inc./© AMNH

The Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Collections Core, which will house approximately 4 million specimens from the Museum’s scientific collections, will feature three stories of visible research and collections spaces providing glimpses into the Museum's collections as well as an exhibition of floor-to-ceiling arrays offering insight into evidence and process of scientific discovery in various types of collections, from fossils to insects, with the first and second floors supported by the Macaulay Family Foundation. 

Education Zones

A rendering of one of the next-generation classrooms in the Middle School Zone of the Gilder Center, serving grades 5 through 8.
Courtesy of Ralph Appelbaum Associates

State-of-the-art education spaces in the Gilder Center will include new classrooms within the Josh and Judy Weston Middle School Learning Zone, the High School Learning Zone, and the College and Career Readiness Zone, with adjacent renovated spaces in the existing Museum complex creating the Michael Vlock Family Learning Zone and a Teacher Learning Zone.

Research Library and Learning Center

The Gottesman Research Library and Learning Center at the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation will be a dynamic hub that connects visitors with the Museum Library’s many unparalleled resources and helps patrons navigate flows of information, both print and digital.
Neoscape, Inc./© AMNH

The Museum’s Library is being redesigned and re-situated for easier access by the public, with a new scholars’ reading room, exhibition alcove, group study room, and adult learning zone in the new Gottesman Research Library and Learning Center.

Invisible Worlds Theater

A new, immersive theater in the Gilder Center will reveal new frontiers of scientific research through scientific visualizations, letting visitors experience phenomena from across the natural world made accessible—and visible—through new imaging technologies.