Even with the delays and extra cost, many agree that the benefits of a newly remodeled museum – more than twice the size of the original – will be fantastic. Kerynn Fisher, Communications Coordinator at the UA Museum of the North, says that the new building will provide an "introduction to a range of art and also a way to get a better understanding of Alaskan life through the art."

An entirely new wing has been added on to the museum, vastly increasing exhibit areas and allowing the museum to show off more of its collection of 1.4 million pieces. This will also increase the accessibility of the pieces on display. The upper level of the addition to the building will be dedicated to housing traveling exhibits, the first of which will be a show from the New York Metropolitan Museum, "the first of its kind in Alaska," says Fisher.

The main floor of the new wing will also house a new multimedia auditorium, complete with retractable seats to further widen its use, and a new coffee shop.

The museum will not be hiring any new full-time staff, but there will be a possibility of hiring new student employees, especially attendants to run the front desk. The availability of grant money will determine what kinds of research they can do, and hence how many staff are needed.

The older section of the building is also seeing changes. Except for the main exhibit floor, the entire building is being reconfigured. The single conference room in the original museum will be replaced with several rooms, each designed for specific purposes. This will allow the museum to serve students better by giving professors access for classes.

The lower floor of the old building will continue to house the bulk of the museum's collection, but it will be expanded to allow for growth in the collection. With so many artifacts in the collection, there is very limited room for expansion, so this project will add more sliding shelves. The lower level will also feature enlarged research labs, as well as offices for graduate students and the film center.

Two of the new research labs that will be going in downstairs are the so-called Dirt and Blood labs. The Dirt lab will be dedicated to the study and preservation of geologic and archaeological artifacts, while the Blood lab will be used for animal artifacts, including beached whales.

The architecture of the new building has garnered much attention for the museum from passersby and from Outside sources, including the Seattle Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. The museum was even featured on the front page of CNN.com. Each has run an article about the styling and future content of Alaska's newest museum.

"This is far more press that the project would have received if it were a square box," said Fisher. "The new museum does things for a whole spectrum of visitors, different parts of the project are going to be special to very different groups of people."

The project is scheduled for completion in May of this year, giving the museum staff a few months to relocate their exhibits and prepare for the grand opening ceremony Sept. 10. On Dec. 3, the museum will host its annual Open House, giving the general public its first glimpse of the behind-the-scenes areas of the new museum.

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