Fans of the International Spy Museum now have a light at the end of the tunnel for when the temporarily shuttered museum will reopen: May 11.
That’s the date museum officials say the new facility, located at 700 L’Enfant Plaza in Southwest D.C., will open to the public. They are in the process of moving many of the existing exhibits over from the museum’s former home.
The permanent exhibits will be done by then, including those featuring many newly acquired artifacts and subjects not previously featured in the museum. New topics the exhibits will tackle include East Berlin during the Cold War, including a piece of the Berlin Wall, and more content related to cybersecurity and espionage.
Unlike Spy’s former home, which only had about 19,000 square feet of exhibit space, the new building will also have room for temporary, rotating exhibitions, though those will likely come after the May 11 opening. There is 32,000 square feet of exhibit space in the new building, along with a large top-floor event space and rooftop terrace. The rooftop event space has been open since last fall.
Spy closed the Penn Quarter Museum Jan. 1 in order to focus on the move. The new museum cost $162 million to build and will allow the group to host 100,000 more visitors per year, bringing the total to around 700,000.
Most of the exhibits and artifacts have already been removed from the old museum, including one very high-profile item. Museum officials used a crane to move a James Bond car, an Aston Martin DB5, on Jan. 5.
The museum dedicated to espionage and all things covert has been one of the most successful paid-entry museums in Washington, which boasts so many free Smithsonians.
