The London skyline has been broken recently by the presence of a series of tower cranes as an increasing number of new buildings take shape around the capital city and many old familiar structures undergo extension and restoration to mark the new millennium. In May the National Portrait Gallery's NPG 2000 development opened to the public and the 'Tate Modern', the largest modern art gallery in the world, was launched within the former Bankside Power Station. Bloomsbury is no exception and for the past two years the British Museum has played host to two giant cranes which have towered above Sir Robert Smirke's neo-classical building. These have enabled the British Museum Great Court to be constructed within the Museum's central courtyard, an architecturally sensitive area dominated by the famous Round Reading Room and surrounded by Smirke's courtyard facades, for 150 years hidden from the public and obscured by later additions.
Designed by Sir Norman Foster and Partners and crowned by a spectacular undulating glass and steel roof which spans the whole of the courtyard, the Great Court will provide unrivalled facilities within a unique setting. A centre for education, galleries and exhibition space, bookshops cafés and a restaurant will be located within the largest covered public space in Europe. At the heart of the Great Court, the Reading Room, restored to its original architectural splendour, will house a public reference library for the twenty-first century. Furthermore, with greatly improved access routes, for the first time visitors will be able to navigate the whole of this historic Museum building with ease.
This is the first phase of a cohesive and wide-ranging ten year programme of development and restoration which will transform the British Museum. Certain key factors determined this programme: the expected departure of the British Library and the anticipated return of the Museum's Ethnography Department (The Museum of Mankind), a strong need for improved facilities for an ever increasing number of visitors and the rapid growth of information technology. Ease of public access throughout the Museum
will be a priority.
The move of the British Library to its new building designed by Sir Colin St John Wilson was completed by December 1998. It released approximately 40% of the total accommodation on the Bloomsbury site to Museum use. This was exciting yet challenging, especially as much of the vacant space was purpose-built for library collections, some areas being of prime historical and architectural significance. The quality of space ranged from former reading rooms and offices converted subsequently for utilitarian book storage to the magnificent King's Library built between 1823 and 1828 to house the Library of King George III. All will have to be re-integrated into the Museum's infrastructure
On 2 March 1998, following a series of 'enabling works' to divert services and isolate the inner courtyard from the rest of the Museum, work began on the construction of the Great Court. Museum tradition and current legislation demanded detailed recording of any alterations to the Museum building and thorough on-site excavation work. This work has required the services of a site archaeologist liaising closely with contractors, overseeing record photography and revealing a wide range of site evidence. Excavated material, currently on display in the Museum, has increased our knowledge of the development of the Museum site. The late 17th century foundations of long disappeared Montagu House, the Museum's first home, have been discovered under the Museum's forecourt which is undergoing restoration. Also, tantalising remains of the original architectural and decorative features have been excavated and conserved, including sections of ornamental stone, and plaster work still displaying evidence of rich gilding. Within deeper excavations a Lower Palaeolithic flint hand axe was revealed within the gravel deposits beneath the Museum site. The Museum was resolved to remain open to the public during this major project. Despite such invasive work this commitment has been maintained.
Systematically, the inner courtyard was cleared and excavated. Preparations were made for the reconstruction of the south portico, demolished in 1877 to make way for an extension to the Entrance Hall, and the restoration of the surviving three porticoes badly scarred by earlier invasive building works. The north facade had been altered considerably during the remodelling of the north wing in the 1930s. Here, Smirke's original fenestration would be reinstated. The restored neo-classical Entrance Hall will be resplendent in its restored 1847 decorative scheme of red, blue, green and gold, originally derived from classical sources and reflecting the mid-19th century debate over polychromy.
The restoration of the Round Reading Room was problematic insofar as it was now isolated from the rest of the Museum, its surrounding book stacks had been removed and temporary access was by ladder only. An independent air conditioning unit was installed once the original services had been disconnected and scaffolding filled the interior of the dome creating a somewhat surreal art installation.
Visitors to the Reading Room before its closure may have noticed the meandering cracks across the dome which have been caused by shrinkage and movement of both the panels, a type of papier mâché, and the frame beneath. Past repairs have proved ineffective but the innovative use of a specially designed woven fabric to cover the cracks appears to have solved this problem. Gradually, the original decorative scheme was revealed through analysis of the several paint layers augmented by evidence found within the Museum's extensive archive, including a sample of the blue paint submitted to the Museum's Trustees for their approval 145 years ago. This restoration work has now been completed and the Reading Room is being prepared for its opening as the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre and the Paul Hamlyn Library. The Annenberg Centre will occupy three quarters of the floor space and will combine traditional sources of information retrieval with the best in modern technology. The Paul Hamlyn Library, a new reference library of 25,000 books with unrestricted public access, will specialise in publications relevant to the civilizations and societies represented in the Museum's collections. Complementing the library COMPASS, a major innovation in museum, multimedia, public access systems, will offer a variety of possibilities for exploring the Museum's collections in new ways and will enable users to gain a fuller understanding of objects and their context. By linking items from all parts of the Museums collections thematically, it will offer much more that a conventional collections database whilst harnessing the best in three dimensional imaging, computer modelling and video. School groups will have their own COMPASS room within the new Education Centre.
The Clore Centre for Education will be located at the south side of the lower level of the Great Court. This will enable the Museum to develop its education and outreach programmes for the widest possible audience. Two auditoria will be the location for a programme of lectures, film and video seven days a week, as well as academic conferences, concerts and other performances related to cultural festival or the theme of a special exhibition. Five multi-purpose rooms will be used for a variety of activities which will contribute to the creation of a lively and stimulating educational experience. The Centre for Young Visitors will enable the Museum to provide for the first time dedicated facilities for the many school and college groups. Further accommodation adjacent to the Great Court will be provided for a video-editing suite, a resource centre for teachers and students, a central slide and film library and facilities for visiting scholars, lecturers and interns.
In 1970 the British Museum's Department of Ethnography moved to Burlington Gardens in London's Piccadilly as the Museum of Mankind There, for more than 25 years, these important collections could be shown only within a series of temporary exhibitions. This 'temporary' move was accelerated by a dire lack of space at the Bloomsbury site, a problem for the Museum long before Smirke's new Museum building was completed around the middle of the 19th century. In the past, attempts to resolve these space problems have never been ideal. However, as a major part of the Museum's development plans, holistic in approach , the ethnography collections are being returned to Bloomsbury. Already the Mexican and North American collections are displayed within two new galleries created out of former library office space in the Museum's North Wing. Spaces devoted to further permanent and temporary exhibitions are in the process of being created The centrepiece for the new Ethnography galleries will be a space that was for many years the North Library. In fact, this area has been reconstructed on two occasions since its completion in 1838 as the Long Room for library storage. This space will now be devoted to a general introduction to the collections and to the development of anthropology and ethnography in the 19th and 20th centuries and provide a principal link between the Museum's Montague Place entrance and the Great Court. It will also connect with the Sainsbury African Galleries. The Museum's African collections are among the finest in the world and the new African galleries on the north side of the Great Court will occupy a space of approximately 900 square metres, presenting both the riches of Africa's past and its vivid contemporary cultures.
The Great Court project has been supported by grants from the Millennium Commission and the Heritage Lottery Fund and by donations from generous private individuals, companies foundations and trusts.
Associated with the Great Court and Reading Room developments is a major programme for the restoration and redecoration of all the grand public rooms on the Museum's principal floor. The King's Library is one of the most important Regency interiors in London and by 2003, to mark the 250th anniversary of the British Museum, this fine room will be restored with private funding. The Museum's plans will be in keeping with the room's original purpose and the historic library furniture will be utilised where possible. A library, contemporary with the King's Library, will be housed within the original book presses and complemented by an exhibition on discovery and learning which will introduce visitors to the way in which knowledge has been gathered and classified in the past.
The Museum's next major development will be the creation of a Study Centre, a radically new approach to making the collections available to the widest possible audience, enabling visitors to experience being behind the scenes of the British Museum. Visible storage, students' rooms, special education programmes, computer access to the collections database, and the opportunity to observe conservation and archaeological work in progress are among the facilities to be offered. The Study Centre will be located within the former Royal Mail West Sorting Office on New Oxford Street, as near to the Museum's entrance as its north wing.
Together, these major developments will provide all visitors with first-rate facilities, ensure enviable space for the exhibition and storage of the collections and maintain the position of the British Museum for this new Millennium.

Christopher Date
Archivist
The British Museum