New Walk Museum & Art Gallery

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The New Walk Museum and Art Gallery is a museum on New Walk in Leicester, England, not far from the city centre. It opened in 1849 as one of the first public museums in the United Kingdom. New Walk contains displays of both science and art, international and local. The original building was designed by Joseph Hansom, designer of the hansom cab. It has been expanded several times, most recently in 2011.Major exhibitsPermanent exhibits include dinosaurs, an Egyptian area, minerals of Leicestershire, the first Charnia fossil identified nearby, and a wildspace area featuring stuffed animals from around the world.Dinosaurs and fossilsNew Walk Museum has a significant collection of extinct lifeforms. Two dinosaur skeletons are permanently on display — a cetiosaur found in Rutland, and a plesiosaur from Barrow upon Soar.The Rutland Dinosaur, affectionately nicknamed George, is a specimen of Cetiosaurus oxoniensis. The fifteen-meter dinosaur, which is among the most complete sauropod skeletons in the world, was discovered in June 1968, in the Williamson Cliffe quarry near Little Casterton and Great Casterton. The skeletal remains have been in the museum since 1975; the majority of the bones in the display are replicas of the originals, which are too fragile to be used. The Rutland Dinosaur featured on an episode of Blue Peter, and was opened by Blue Peter's Janet Ellis in 1985.