New Milwaukee Public Museum construction update

Yahoo

23-04-2025

The Brief
The new Milwaukee Public Museum is being built at the corner of 6th and Vliet Streets in Milwaukee's Haymarket neighborhood, near the Deer District.
Visitors can still attend the current MPM site through 2026, before the big move to the new museum.
The museum is expected to open to the public in early 2027.
MILWAUKEE - After years of talk, the new Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) is standing tall.
It's an inside look you'll only see on FOX6 News.
What we know
The new museum is being built at the corner of 6th and Vliet Streets in Milwaukee's Haymarket neighborhood, near the Deer District.
The project is expected to cost $240 million. The museum is expected to open to the public in early 2027.
The museum is moving after 140 years.
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What they're saying
MPM Chief Planning Officer Katie Sanders said four of the five floors are done. The fourth floor of the museum will hold collection storage and also be a place where the research labs will go.
"It's going up quickly. We will see the floors of the building done this summer and the enclosure already this June," said Katie Sanders, MPM Chief Planning Officer. "On the western part of the building are all of the exhibit areas."
Next will be the exterior, made up of 700 stone concrete panels.
On Tuesday, April 22, crews worked on a mock-up, practicing for its uniqueness.
"We're looking at limited natural light in the building so that we can protect the collections, we need ample room to store the collections as well, as obviously everyone's favorite part – the exhibits," Sandes said. "Building a new natural history museum is very rare. Most natural history museums have extensions or additions, so Milwaukee is super fortunate to be able to do this project."
Dig deeper
Just a few blocks away at the current museum site, crews have started packing up the 4 million objects that will eventually move. The only permanent closure for deinstallation is the mezzanine above the third floor.
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"We're just taking items from different areas throughout the museum and deinstalling those," Sanders said.
At the current museum site, the Asia gallery is temporarily closed as part of the next phase of packing for the new museum.
Visitors can still attend the current MPM site through 2026, before the big move to the new museum.
The Source
The information in this post was collected and produced by FOX6 News with help from the Milwaukee Public Museum.