Dinosaurs to the rescue as new life awakens for an old museum

She credits the museum board, the Berejiklian government and Arts Minister Don Harwin for taking the courageous decision to shut down the entire museum for 15 months.

"We told the government the changes were so dramatic there's no way we could safely keep it open to the public during construction."

Luck was on her side. If you're going to close a museum for so long, it might as well be the year when the entire world is shut by COVID-19.

"Turns out I had some foresight, didn't I?" she laughs. "When COVID-19 came, I had to send all the staff home. But that allowed the builders to get on and not worry about the noise and the disruption. I came to work every day during COVID-19 because I wanted the builders to know we could solve problems on the spot."

She did worry, however, whether the two new long escalators designed to provide seamless flow between the Grand Hall and the world-standard new Touring Exhibition Hall would ever arrive. They were being built in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began. Now they're installed, enhancing the museum's flexibility.

"Sydney used to lose out to Melbourne because we didn't have the proper space to take big blockbuster exhibitions. Today I'm talking to major world museums about exhibitions.

"We can have a visiting blockbuster exhibition on the lower floor and a separate exhibition above. Or we can use both together, which gives us 1500 square metres of exhibition space."

At the same time, the much-loved heritage spaces have been protected: "If anything, we have enhanced the heritage aspects by revealing much more of the historic sandstone, a convict-built sandstone drain and a colonial-era fireplace."

So what should stickybeaks notice when they go for the free house inspection? Here are McKay's 10 director's picks.

1. THE CLOAKROOM: "This used to be office space in the former basement. All that beautiful, hand-hewn convict-era sandstone was covered up with plasterboard. It could double up as a bar at night."

2. THE ESCHER STAIRCASE: (The 20th century Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher was so famed for his lithographs of staircases defying gravity it has become an architectural term.) "Ours has been positioned behind the windows that overlook William Street. So the higher you climb, the better view of Sydney you get."

3. CRYSTAL HALL (the award-winning William Street entrance added in 2016): "Taking the back off Crystal Hall [now named after Brian Sherman, a philanthropist and museum's former president] created an entry plaza that makes it clear you are walking into a really significant civic building."

4. MEMBERS' LOUNGE: "With its gorgeous parquetry flooring and cabinetry, this is a great place for members to just escape."

5. GRAND HALL: "The new heart of the museum."

6. TOURING EXHIBITION HALL: "It has a six-metre-high ceiling and 1000 square metres compared with the 850 square metres we had before and the fact it is located in the former basement means it's now capable of taking heavy international exhibitions."

7. MISSION STATEMENT: "I'm very proud of this because all the staff contributed to it. As visitors walk into Crystal Hall they'll see that as well as continuing to do our extraordinary science, the museum will have a renewed focus on climate change as well as integrating First Nations' knowledge in everything we do."

8. ACCESS: "My father spent several years in a wheelchair and I learnt then how difficult it was to navigate public buildings. Our accessibility committee has several members in wheelchairs. The old museum had many different levels. The new one is accessible to all."

9. SHOPPING: "I love a bit of retail therapy, but research shows other visitors love to buy in museum shops, too. It's where I'll be doing all my Christmas shopping."

10. DINING: "There's a new family-friendly cafe on Level 2 but if you want a more elegant, affordable lunch with perhaps a glass of wine, we've given a facelift to our rooftop cafe, No 1 William Street. I call it our New York view of Sydney."

Not that the revamp is completed. "In the next three years we will be opening five new galleries," McKay says. All five are earmarked on the floor plan, each marked as "new gallery".

So what will they be?

"The first will be a new minerals gallery, followed by a brilliant educational learning space."

Third on her list is a Pacific gallery, highlighting the museum's immense collection from our region. Then comes an Egyptian gallery, incorporating the museum's collection, formerly held at Sydney and Macquarie universities. Finally, an insect and butterfly gallery. Why?

"Insects are so important to Australian biodiversity," McKay says. "They are the scaffolding of all other plants and animals, intrinsic to a thriving environment. And they're also beautiful."

That sounds like mission completed, then? No need to hang on until the museum's 200th anniversary in 2027?

"Why not?" says the director. "I can't think of anything better than celebrating a 200th birthday party."

TYRANNOSAURS TRUMP KING TUT

Call it Meet the Family II. Since 2014, when Scotty, the 12-metre-long T-rex, made his performance debut at the Australian Museum alongside his kin and cousins, he has roamed far more than he did in his lifetime: from Sydney to New Zealand, Canada, the US, Scotland back to Sydney. The cast of Scotty's skeleton, one of the largest T-rexs ever discovered, makes an unlikely large understudy.

Before COVID-19 hit, the blockbuster exhibition due to relaunch the museum was meant to be Tutankhamun, Treasures Of The Golden Pharaoh.

"I fell to the curse of King Tut," McKay admits. Egyptian authorities forbade the globally acclaimed travelling exhibition from being anywhere other than Cairo during the pandemic. Luckily, there was a ready-made replacement. Coronavirus had also put the Edinburgh Museum into lockdown, so frantic efforts were made to bring Scotty and his clan "home" again.

How do you airfreight a 12-metre T-Rex from Scotland to Sydney? "You buy a few extra seats in economy," McKay jokes. "Actually, it is a much better opening exhibition for the times because it's family friendly, whereas Tut would have needed international visitors, which we don't have."

But all is not lost for Egyptophiles. "I still have a slot for Tut after COVID-19."

So what's different from Meet the Family I? Fran Dorey was the curator who created the original exhibition. In six years, so many discoveries have been made that the Tyrannosaur ancestry tree has gone through major changes. Expect to meet at least 13 more kin in this incarnation, including an 80 million-year-old close cousin to Scotty, and a tiny – only five metres long, the same length as an adult saltwater croc – relative that first appeared 95 million years ago.

Bookings are essential owing to COVID-19 restrictions on numbers. Go online to australian.museum