An 1,800sq m purpose-built venue will open at the Science Museum next June. Showcasing the National Photography Collection from the National Media Museum, the Media Space will and provides a forum to discuss works by contemporary artists across a variety of disciplines.

Each year it will present two major, paid for exhibitions and a series of free installations.

Head of Media Space, Hannah Redler, says it will be the place where the two cultures of art and science collide: “Media Space offers an unprecedented opportunity for our audiences to encounter photographs and artists' own investigations into our collections.”

The capital cost of the project is £4m. Funding has come from a variety of sources: the principal founding sponsor is Virgin Media and the Dana and Albert R Broccoli Foundation the founding donor.

The first exhibition, Revelations: Experiments in Photography, will explore contemporary artists' responses to scientific photography from 1850 to 1920. This collection of 80 works will use important historical photographs from the National Media Museum and the Science Museum. Some of the photographs have been taken with the use of microscopes, telescopes and aircraft and present the world in a different way.

Ian Blatchford, director and chief executive of Science Museum Group, hopes this space will reach diverse audiences: “Media Space is a project that is long overdue. The National Photography Collection ought to be widely known and exhibited because it really is astonishing in quality and scale.”