Exterior Facade Goes Up On New Museum

Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin. Photo taken Aug. 18, 2025 by Graham Kilmer.

In July, construction workers from Mortenson Construction finished building the steel and concrete frame for Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin being built at 1310 N. 6th St.

Since then, the precast stone panels built by Stonecast Products in Germantown have started going up, enclosing the five-story, 200,000-square-foot building. There are 670 of them and they are designed to provide the building with a rolling, bluff-like appearance.

Each panel was designed to hang on a specific place on the exterior, to achieve the rounded facade, free from 90-degree angles, designed by architects from New York-based Ennead Architects. The longest panel is 40 feet long, and the heaviest weighs more than 25 tons.

The $240 million project is expected to be finished in time for an opening in early 2027. The project received $40 million from the state of Wisconsin and $45 million from Milwaukee County, MPM is working to fundraise the rest of the cost. Earlier this year, MPM announced it had raised a total of $191 million in public and private funds.

Public Museum Removes More Items From Display

Some exhibits at the Milwaukee Public Museum were recently on display for the last time at the current museum at 800 W. Wells St.

As MPM continues the painstaking process of packing and moving its collections to the new Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin, some items currently on display at the public museum are also being removed and packed, ultimately headed for the new museum.

In April, the Asia Gallery on the third floor and the Pre-Columbian Mezzanine above the third floor were closed so museum staff could begin packing away some of the artifacts on display. Beginning Aug. 19, Hopi pottery in the southwest area of the exhibit floor will be removed from display on the second floor. In September, staff will also begin removing some of the taxidermy on the second floor, as well.

“You’ll see these priceless artifacts and specimens again in the new museum’s gallery Living in a Dynamic World—an entire floor full of immersive scenes that depict people, plants, and animals found across different landscapes,” the museum said in a public statement on social media. 

Later this fall, though, the Asia Gallery will reopen after staff finish deinstalling some of the items that are headed for the new museum.

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