Minnesota’s favorite stuffed moose is getting ready to move.

The Bell Museum and Planetarium will unveil architectural plans and hold a celebratory groundbreaking this weekend for its new $79 million museum project in St. Paul.

The small natural history museum is housed in a charming but cramped 1940s-era building in the heart of the University of Minnesota East Bank campus. It will migrate — along with its historic taxidermy dioramas — to a new facility on the corner of Larpenteur and Cleveland avenues on the St. Paul campus, set to open late summer of 2018. The new space will include a state-of-the-art digital theater functioning as the first public planetarium in the Twin Cities since the one in the former central Minneapolis Public Library was torn down in 2002.

“I’ve been a curator at the Bell the last 15 years,” said George Weiblen, a biology professor and the Bell’s interim scientific director. “I can remember during my job interview in 1999 when the director at that time talked about the need for a new Bell Museum. It’s exciting to be at this point, to be finally emerging from the shadows into the light of day.”

EVIDENCE OF ORIGIN OF LIFE, FROM RIGHT HERE

At 92,500 square feet, the new two-story building will be only 10 percent larger than the current one, but it will be air conditioned, configured for modern needs and able to present Minnesota’s natural world in new ways, with the goal of doubling attendance to more than 100,000 visitors each year. The exterior will be clad in white pine and steel, a nod to the state’s natural resources. Related Articles Bell Museum celebrates art and science with the Bell Social

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The five-acre site will include a large parking lot and landscapes with beehives, pollinator gardens, rock samples, solar panels and a pond, which will help the museum keep 95 percent of its storm water on site. A separate entrance for school buses could double the number of field trips. The building, designed by Minneapolis architectural office of Perkins + Will, will be flooded with light through floor-to-ceiling windows using bird-safe glass.

“That was one of the early requirements,” said chief operating officer Steven Lott, part of the team leading the Bell as it searches for a new director. “Considering we have ornithologists on staff, well, we’re not going to not have bird-safe glass. It would go against who we are.”

At the heart of the building is the 120-seat planetarium, a massive concrete cylinder that forms one curved wall of the main lobby. A staircase will sweep along one side leading to 19,000 square feet of permanent exhibit space on the second floor.

The exhibits themselves will incorporate the Bell’s additional new focus on space education. The first gallery will start with the Big Bang and explain the formation of Earth.

“What is little appreciated is that some of the best evidence we have for origin of life is here in Minnesota in some of our oldest rock,” Weiblen said. “We have 500 million-year-old limestone formations loaded with spectacular forms of sea life. We’re going to interpret this cosmic and deep earth history through the lens of Minnesota.” Other displays will showcase early flora and fauna.

“It’s not the Minnesota you’d expect to see, but it’s Minnesota of 10,000 years ago when ice was receding and there were mastodons and saber tooth cats,” Weiblen said. “It’s part of our message: Nature is changing all the time. And we’re a part of that.”

DIORAMAS IMPROVED, AND ARE STILL THE STARS

Weiblen calls the museum’s dioramas its “crown jewels” and they will be given star billing. But rather than displayed one after another along the sides of a dim hall, they will highlight Minnesota’s three major habitats. So the big moose will stand tall amid interactive displays about the diversity of the northern coniferous forests; the fuzzy gray prairie vole might hang out with animals and plants from the prairie grasslands.

The museum will keep intact 10 large dioramas by Francis Lee Jaques, who grew up in Minnesota and went on to paint dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. A handful of others may also be preserved as they are, but many will be stored or dismantled to use in other ways.

The animal migration will be expensive. In January, a preservation team practiced taking apart and preserving the Dall sheep diorama, the only species in the museum not native to the state, and for that reason, offered as a sacrificial lamb to allow the team to perfect its technique. The Bell figures it will take about $7 million to disassemble, preserve, move and reinstall the dioramas with new interpretation.

“It’s going to cost us more money than what we had allocated,” said Beverly Anglum, chief development officer and director of advancement.

In fact, everything is going to cost a bit more than anticipated, so the Bell is formally kicking off its $15 million capital campaign this weekend to raise money for exhibits, furnishings and programming. This is in addition to $6 million in private money that has trickled in over the years. A 2014 state legislative deal approved $51.5 million for the new Bell. The University, which runs the museum, later kicked in an additional $6.7 million.

“Over the last 10 years it’s had starts and stops,” Anglum said. “The bonding legislation really helped to give this project legs. Now we’re in a much better place to raise the $15 million. It’s become real for people.”

IF YOU GO

The Bell Museum of Natural History unveils plans for its new building and celebrates Earth Day. Stop by Friday, Saturday or Sunday for ExploraDome shows in the mini-planetarium, migratory bird programs, the Hungry Planet exhibit; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday.