The Grand Turk based National Museum of the Turks and Caicos will reveal ambitious $3m expansion plans on its 20th anniversary on Wednesday, 23 November 2011.
A second museum site at The Village, Grace Bay, Providenciales is currently under development and a visitor center at the building site will be finished early in 2012
The Museum’s mandate is to collect and preserve the cultural and natural history of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
It tells the story of the Islands from their formation millions of years ago through the arrival of the Native Americans, the Spanish and French explorers, the Loyalist Planters, and shipwrecked slaves from Africa. Its story is illustrated with artefacts are already in the Museum’s collections.
The new site is designed to make it easier for the Museum to reach out to the larger population of TCI residents and visitors on Providenciales, where it is intended that it can become a key education resource for school students too.
In time the two sites will also present the history of the TCI but also reflect the differences between the Caicos and the Turks islands.
The Molasses Reef Wreck has been the main exhibit on Grand Turk for almost 20 years. Moving it to the Museum at Grace Bay will place it closer to its original location and give an opportunity to upgrade it to modern standards.
The space it occupied in the Grand Turk location can then be filled with artefacts telling the story of HMS Endymion, a 44-gun British warship that went down in 1790 at the southern end of the Turks Islands Bank.
Other planned new exhibits appropriate to Grand Turk include the history of diving in the TCI, starting with the early helmet diving pioneer Jeremiah D. Murphy in the 1850’s and including free-divers Jacques Mayol and Tanya Streeter.
Established in 1991 in the Guinep House, Cockburn Town, the National Museum is located in one of the oldest buildings on Grand Turk. However, given its age and position on the Atlantic coast, a second site is also essential to preserving the Museum’s work.
