 For more than 100 years, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science has grown along with Denver, expanding many times to meet the increasing needs of the community.
The Museum intends to be a thriving institution for generations to come. Thanks to Denver voters, the Museum will receive approximately $50 million in Better Denver bond funding to improve our 100-year-old building, ultimately bringing better traveling exhibitions, education programs, and opportunities to the community.
In addition, the Museum has recently completed the Museum 20/20 Strategic Plan that will guide the development of dynamic, permanent exhibitions and programming over the next 11 years. By completing the goals set out in the strategic plan, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science will become the world’s best regional nature and science museum, focused on the spectacular Rocky Mountain Region.
 Better Denver
The Museum will use approximately $20 million of the Better Denver bond funds toward much-needed infrastructure improvements on our 100-year-old building in City Park. The most exciting of the upcoming projects is a complete renovation of Phipps Special Exhibits Gallery, where the Museum’s traveling exhibitions are staged. By bringing the gallery up to contemporary museum standards with improved climate control and lighting systems, an improved vapor barrier, and increased electrical capacity, the Museum will continue to bring the world to Denver and present high-quality exhibitions for the public in a comfortable, accessible space. The Phipps Gallery upgrades will be completed in September 2009. 
Other infrastructure projects will make our building more energy efficient and replace aging elevators, bathroom fixtures, HVAC, electrical, public address, and life safety systems. Many of these projects are already underway.
The remaining $30 million of the Better Denver funds will be used to build a new science education center that will enable the Museum to deliver science classes to the children of Colorado in modern, comfortable classrooms. Underneath the science education center will be a new storage area to house the 1 million objects in our collections. The whole facility will be located on the south side of the building, near where the school entrance is now. It will not extend beyond current sidewalks and driveways in order to preserve the green space in City Park. Planning is underway for these new additions.
Museum 20/20 Strategic Plan
 In April 2009, the Museum completed the first large-scale project in the Museum 20/20 Strategic Plan—Expedition Health, a new permanent health exhibition. Visitors can enjoy a highly personalized, highly interactive experience in Expedition Health. It is not an exhibition simply about the human body; Expedition Health is about your human body—how it is constantly changing and adapting in ways you can see, measure, and optimize through the choices you make. The common thread running through Expedition Health is how your body is equipped to face the challenges of a hiking expedition up one of Colorado’s best-loved “fourteeners,” Mount Evans.
Museum 20/20 includes additional plans for new permanent exhibitions and new programs that will take shape in the coming years. These initiatives will:
- Create new classroom programs designed to increase the scientific literacy of preschool through eighth-grade students, their teachers, and their families.
- Design a new permanent exhibition to tell the story of Planet Earth and the relationship between its geological, biological, and atmospheric processes, with a special emphasis on the geological story of Colorado’s spectacular mountains.
- Increase understanding of human origins and the diversity of world cultures—especially those in the Rocky Mountain Region—through a new permanent exhibition and new programs.
- Improve the care and storage of the 1 million objects in our collections and increase public access to these items.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science first opened its doors 100 years ago, and with the upgrades provided by Better Denver and the exciting plans outlined in the Museum 20/20 Strategic Plan, the Museum will be able to serve the community for generations to come.
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