Making the Modern world - A gallery charting the development of technology from 1750 onwards.
Welcome Wing - The museum`s new wing houses six galleries showcasing developments in contemporary science, medicine and technology.
Exhibitions currently running:
Listening Post - Listening Post is a ‘dynamic portrait’ of online communication, displaying uncensored fragments of text, sampled in real-time, from public internet chatrooms and bulletin boards. Artists Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin have divided their work into seven separate ‘scenes’ akin to movements in a symphony. Each scene has its own ‘internal logic’, sifting, filtering and ordering the text fragments in different ways. By pulling text quotes from thousands of unwitting contributors' postings, Listening Post allows you to experience an extraordinary snapshot of the internet and gain a great sense of the humanity behind the data. The artwork is world renowned as a masterpiece of electronic and contemporary art and a monument to the ways we find to connect with each other and express our identities online. Until 19 February 2009.
Dan Dare & the Birth of Hi-tech Britain -Dan Dare’s rocket fleet roars high over Venus to trounce his arch foe – the power-mad Mekon. Meanwhile, back on Earth, another extraordinary future is unfolding – one which laid the foundation for Britain’s hi-tech consumer society. After 1945, though war-weary and broke, Britain found huge pride in wartime advances such as radar, penicillin and the jet engine. Discoveries like these were now tipped to kick-start world-beating industries, bring prosperity and bankroll the emerging welfare state. In an age before globalisation, products from rockets to radios sprang from local roots. Together they reveal a fascinating ‘lost world’ of British design and invention – a glimpse of a time when the TV in the corner was a Murphy, not a Sony. This exciting new temporary exhibition explores the role played by technology in creating post-war Britain. Until 25 October 2009.