In 2018 the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich will open its new ‘Endeavour Galleries’, “to allow the Museum to take a lead role in Cook 250 – the commemoration of Lieutenant James Cook’s 1768 departure down the River Thames in HM Bark ‘Endeavour’ on the first of his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific.”  The four permanent Exploration Wing galleries will span Pacific and polar exploration and Britain’s maritime past.

The new galleries – Pacific Exploration, Polar Worlds, Tudor and Stuart Seafarers, and Sea Things – will expand exhibition space by 40% with 1000 more objects from the museum’s collections.

“The new Pacific Encounters gallery tells stories of encounter, exploration, and exploitation. The gallery will display objects from the voyages of Captain Cook and other British navigators alongside a full size Pacific voyaging canoe and a newly commissioned piece by a Pacific artist. It will put the museum’s historic exploration collections into the broader context of Pacific histories, identities, and the legacies of these encounters in the Pacific today.”

For more on the museum and its Endeavour Galleries, visit the

Royal Museums Greenwich website.