Imperial War Museum 'gets the wow factor' with £40 million revamp

The Imperial War Museum today unveiled its £40 million transformation, which puts the human stories of conflict centre stage.

A dramatic new central atrium with 400 exhibits forms the heart of the redesign, telling the history of the last century of war chronologically upwards through the museum.

A Harrier Jet, a Spitfire, a V-1 rocket, a T-34 tank and a Reuters news agency Land Rover damaged by a rocket attack in Gaza are among nine exhibits positioned or suspended to correspond with displays on different floors.

Director-general Diane Lees said she believed the impact on visitors would be so dramatic that she plans to station staff at the top of stairs to prevent accidents.

“The atrium space will have a major ‘wow’ factor,” she said. “We’re going to make sure we’ve got people at the top of the stairs to make sure people don’t fall down because we think they will be so wowed. It’s a beautiful space, really cathedral-like.”

Hundreds of new objects, including a suicide bomber’s vest and the witness stand from the Lockerbie trial, have been added to displays.

Other exhibits range from a Humber “Pig” vehicle used at the time of the Bloody Sunday shootings to a piece of World Trade Center steel, a Desert Hawk drone and the suitcase of a Jewish couple who died in Auschwitz.

The museum will reopen to the public at the weekend, in time to take the lead in the centenary commemorations of the First World War.

The museum’s new permanent First World War Galleries are three times the size of the old ones, housing 1,300 objects from weapons to diaries and keepsakes. It is the first revamp in 20 years and the first carried out without veterans of the conflict, as none now survive.

Ms Lees said the loss of the museum’s so-called “granddad guide” visitors who had experience of war and an immediate understanding of the displays meant they had needed a new approach.