Redisplaying the Rotunda Museum

‘The Rotunda Museum is unique. It is perhaps the only museum whose design, original displays and even the stone of which it is built combined to express the logic of William Smith’s ideas and the, then, brand new science of geology’ (Professor Simon Knell, University of Leicester). The Rotunda Museum in Scarborough first opened in 1829 and over 175 years later it is the subject of a £4million redevelopment scheme due for completion in 2007. This paper will explain the rationale for the redisplay of the Rotunda Museum. How we plan to present Smith’s ideas, in the context of the aspirations and diverse interests of the Scarborough Philosophical Society and its Museum, return the Museum to the cutting edge of science through the ‘Shell Geology Now’ gallery and provide the gateway to the wider geological heritage of the Yorkshire Coast through the Dinosaur Coast Visitor Centre.