London museum gallery reopens after 80 years with ancient Star Wars toy

As a Herbarium in 1950 (Image: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum London) Natural History Museum London hidden gallery reopening: a second-floor space in the Waterhouse building, shut to the public since 1943, has welcomed visitors again after more than 80 years. Its opening exhibition, Nature and Us, gathers 50 objects that show how people have imagined, exploited and reinterpreted the natural world, including a handaxe made 400,000 years ago. Admission is free, and the exhibition will run for an initial 18 months. Behind the exhibition stands a collection of more than 80 million specimens spanning 4.5 billion years, which the museum calls the most important of its kind anywhere in the world.Why the beautiful Waterhouse building gallery vanished from public view during the Second World WarBefore it closed, the room worked as two galleries in one: an osteology gallery devoted to skeletons, and a mammals gallery. Historic photographs released by the Natural History Museum show it as the Osteology gallery in 1893 and as the Upper Mammals Gallery in 1911.Everything changed when the museum’s original herbarium, its collection of preserved plants, was damaged during the Second W...