Animal Crossing: New Horizons – How to unlock the Museum Art Gallery expansion

Stefan L 24/04/20 Comments Closed

With the latest update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can now unlock new parts to the game’s gorgeous museum. Having been collecting fossils, fish and bugs, Blathers is turning his eye to the world of art, keen to expand his curatorial duties and open a new wing to his museum.

It’s not an immediate upgrade though, and you have several steps to complete before you’ll be able to donate art and visit this new area.

We’ve got plenty of other walkthroughs and tips for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and more on the way. Visit our game hub to check those out.

Talk to Blathers in the Museum

The first step after updating to version 1.2.0 or later, is to talk to Blathers in the museum. In this first conversation after the update, he’ll talk about how he’s hoping to broadening the museum’s scope to include works of art.

Find Redd and buy some art

The following day, Isabelle’s daily news bulletin will include reports of a suspicious character wandering around the island. Don’t worry, it’s nobody truly nefarious, but Redd the slightly shady fox. You’ll want to look around your island until you spot him walking around and chat to him.

As luck would have it, he’s got some artwork that he’s trying to sell – don’t ask how he got it, OK? He’ll give you an astronomical price to start with, but turn this down and he’ll give you a much more reasonable offer. Purchase this piece of artwork.

Take this piece of art to Blathers and show it to him. He’ll ask you to donate it, and if you do, he’ll announce that he’s got some renovations to do. This will happen the next day – Isabelle is on hand again to announce the museum renovations in her daily update – and open the day after.

How to find art to donate

Now you just need to fill the museum with art! This is done by buying artworks from Jolly Redd’s Treasure Trawler, which you will find occasionally anchored off the “secret beach” on the northern edge of your island – you’ll either need the ladder or island editing tools to reach this spot.

On the day that the art gallery opens, Redd will be back wandering your island, and if you speak to him he’ll say that he’s acquired a boat where you can buy art and furniture. Tell him you want to check it out and he’ll dash off to his trawler.

From that point on Redd will be an occasional visitor to your island, and you can buy art from him. Just beware, you can only buy one piece of art from him per visit, and it could be counterfeit. Blathers won’t take any fakes from you, so you’ll need to inspect each artwork and compare it to the real world art in order to figure it out.