We're dealing with over 500 million years.
On Valentine's Day 2026, Liverpool's World Museum opens a quietly transformed space where 500 million years of natural history have been reordered and retold. The gallery, known for decades by its dinosaurs and savannah dioramas, has been renamed Wild World — a small shift in language that signals a larger reckoning with how museums inherit the past and choose to pass it forward. In adding a lioness to a scene that long featured only a lion, curators have made visible what was always true in nature but absent from the display, a reminder that what we choose to show shapes what people believe the world to be.
- A beloved gallery that generations of Liverpool children grew up with closed in November, leaving a familiar space suddenly silent and sheeted in plastic.
- Curators worked through months of quiet renovation, pulling objects from storage and rethinking narratives that had gone unchanged for decades.
- The addition of a lioness to the iconic lion-and-zebra scene is a pointed correction — science long established that lionesses do most of the hunting, but the display had never reflected it.
- Wild World reopens on February 14 spanning over 500 million years of natural history, drawing from botany, geology, entomology, and zoology in ways the old gallery never attempted.
- The museum is candid that some permanent galleries still hold displays from the 1960s and 70s, and that this reopening is a beginning, not a resolution.
Liverpool's World Museum is reopening one of its most visited spaces on February 14, under a new name. The Dinosaur and Natural World gallery, closed since November for a full overhaul, will return as Wild World — a gallery that now stretches across more than 500 million years of natural history, drawing from collections in botany, geology, entomology, and zoology that had long sat in storage.
When the ECHO visited in the final days before opening, the space was still mid-transformation. Plastic sheeting covered the dinosaur casts and the famous lion-and-zebra scene. Curators moved through the gallery mounting specimens and fitting new display cases. The design process had begun the previous August, well before the November closure.
Ashley Cooke, head of World Museum Liverpool, described the ambition behind the refresh: not just cosmetic updates, but bigger stories. The familiar elements remain — the dinosaur replicas, the environmental dioramas — but they now sit within a wider narrative framework. The most visible change involves the lion-and-zebra display, which has been recontextualized with the addition of a lioness, placed there deliberately to reflect what researchers know about predator behavior in the wild.
The reopening arrives in a significant year. World Museum Liverpool turns 175 in 2026, making it the oldest institution in the National Museums Liverpool group. A summer exhibition will mark the group's own 40th anniversary, drawing stories from across the city's museums. Cooke was open about what lies ahead: older permanent galleries, some unchanged since the 1960s and 70s, still await their own reckonings. Wild World is less a finished statement than a first step.
Liverpool's World Museum is preparing to welcome visitors back into one of its most beloved spaces. The Dinosaur and Natural World gallery, which drew crowds for years with its towering replicas and carefully arranged scenes of animal life, closed its doors on November 3 for a complete overhaul. Now, after months of renovation work, it will reopen on February 14 under a new name: Wild World.
When the ECHO visited in the final days before opening, the gallery was still in motion. Plastic sheeting covered the famous dinosaur casts and the iconic lion-and-zebra scene that generations of Liverpool children have walked past. Curators moved methodically through the space, mounting seagulls and fitting new display cases designed to protect the collection for years to come. The work had been underway since last August, when designers first began sketching out what the refreshed gallery would become.
Ashley Cooke, head of World Museum Liverpool, explained the thinking behind the closure. The gallery needed more than cosmetic updates. While it would retain the familiar elements visitors loved—the dinosaur replicas, the environmental dioramas of the Savannah and Northern Forest—the museum wanted to tell bigger stories. The new gallery spans over 500 million years of natural history, drawing from the museum's botany, geology, entomology, and zoology collections. Objects that had been in storage would now have their moment on display, woven into narratives that connected one world to the next.
One change visitors will notice immediately involves that famous lion-and-zebra display. The scene remains, but it has been recontextualized. The museum added a lioness to the showcase for the first time, a deliberate choice to highlight what researchers know about predator behavior: that lionesses, not lions, do most of the hunting in the wild. The new lioness sits in a large case alongside the existing animals, expanding the story the display tells.
The reopening marks a milestone in a larger conversation the museum is having with itself about its own age and relevance. World Museum Liverpool is 175 years old this year, making it the oldest institution in the National Museums Liverpool group, which was formally established by an act of parliament in 1986. This summer, the museum will mount an exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of National Museums Liverpool, a show that will reach across all the city's museums to tell stories beyond natural history alone.
Cooke acknowledged that much work remains. Some of the permanent galleries house displays that date back to the 1960s and 1970s, relics of an earlier curatorial era. The museum is reviewing its temporary exhibition program and planning further renovations of these aging spaces. The Wild World reopening is not an endpoint but a beginning—a signal that the institution is committed to keeping its collections alive and relevant for the next generation of visitors who will walk through its doors.
Citações Notáveis
It's one of our most popular galleries. We sadly had to close it. But it really did need a refresh.— Ashley Cooke, head of World Museum Liverpool
What we wanted to discuss is lionesses are actually more known for their hunting. So we've introduced a lioness which has never been on display before.— Ashley Cooke
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why close an entire gallery for months when you could refresh it gradually, section by section?
Because the story needs to hold together. If you're trying to take visitors on a journey through 500 million years, you can't do that piecemeal. The old gallery was built in the 1970s—it was designed for a different way of thinking about natural history. You have to step back and rebuild the whole thing at once.
The lion-and-zebra scene is famous. Why risk changing it?
They didn't change it, exactly. They contextualized it. The old display told one story—predator and prey. The new one asks a harder question: who actually hunts? Adding the lioness makes the display more honest about how nature works, not less.
Is this just about updating old displays, or is the museum trying to say something about itself?
Both. The museum is 175 years old. It's sitting in a city that's changed enormously. If you keep your displays frozen in the 1970s, you're saying your institution is frozen too. This refresh is the museum saying: we're still here, we're still thinking, we still have things to teach.
What happens to the objects that were in storage?
They come out. That's the real gift of a renovation like this. You get to tell new stories with things that have been sitting in the back for decades. The collections are deeper than the old gallery ever showed.
The museum mentions more work ahead. Does that feel like an ending or a beginning?
A beginning. This is one gallery. They're looking at the whole institution now—the temporary shows, the older galleries, how they fit together. This is the first domino.