Midwest Museum of Natural History

Last updated

Midwest Museum of Natural History
MMNHjpg.jpg
Midwest Museum of Natural History
Established2004 (2004)
Location425 West State Street (Rt 64)
Sycamore, Illinois
Coordinates 41°59′21″N88°41′22″E / 41.989167°N 88.68944°E / 41.989167; 88.68944
TypeLocal history
Website www.mmnh.org

The Midwest Museum of Natural History was a 501(c)3 organization located in Sycamore, Illinois, United States. In 1875, the structure was built as the home of the Universalist Church in Sycamore. In the 1920s the building underwent dramatic changes, becoming the Sycamore Community Center, complete with basketball courts, a swimming pool, and hip hangout, Teen Town. In February 2004, this 129-year-old building was overhauled once again with a top-to-bottom 1.2 million dollar renovation. This included the creation of exhibit halls, classrooms, offices, collection storage, and a new roof and climate controls to help preserve the museum's specimens. The museum closed permanently in February 2020.

Contents

Exhibits

The museum's primary exhibits consisted of dioramas depicting the natural biomes of North America and Africa. Dioramas feature over 100 mounted animals, including one of the few—and one of the largest—elephants on display in the country. The museum also housed a geology collection, interactive children's area, and temporary exhibits in the Rotary Exhibit Gallery and Oasis Room. Additionally, the museum was home to a wide range of live reptiles, amphibians, fish, and arthropods.

A majority of the museum's collection of mounted specimens was donated by Dr. Russell Schelkopf, a local veterinarian, entrepreneur, community leader, conservationist, and hunter.

Activities

The museum offered school fieldtrips, scout and homeschool programs, and group tours. It also provided year-round public programming for all ages, including nature-based preschool classes, adult lectures, dissection workshops, geology programs, live animal presentations, and more. Museum staff frequently conducted programs off-site for local schools and libraries. Annual fundraisers included Rockin' for the Reptiles in June and the Groundhog Gala in February.

The museum is now closed. [1]

Related Research Articles

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a 98-acre zoo, aquarium, botanical garden, natural history museum, publisher, and art gallery founded in 1952. Located just west of Tucson, Arizona, it features two miles (3.2 km) of walking paths traversing 21 acres of desert landscape. It is one of the most visited attractions in Southern Arizona.

The Melbourne Museum is a natural and cultural history museum located in the Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Field Museum of Natural History</span> Natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois

The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational and scientific programs, and its extensive scientific specimen and artifact collections. The permanent exhibitions, which attract up to 2 million visitors annually, include fossils, current cultures from around the world, and interactive programming demonstrating today's urgent conservation needs. The museum is named in honor of its first major benefactor, Marshall Field, the department-store magnate. The museum and its collections originated from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the artifacts displayed at the fair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Museum of Natural History</span> Natural history museum in Manhattan, New York

The American Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 20 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain about 35 million specimens of plants, animals, fungi, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum occupies more than 2,500,000 sq ft (232,258 m2). AMNH has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian Museum of Nature</span> Natural history museum in Ontario, Canada

The Canadian Museum of Nature is a national natural history museum based in Canada's National Capital Region. The museum's exhibitions and public programs are housed in the Victoria Memorial Museum Building, a 18,910-square-metre structure (203,500 sq ft) in Ottawa, Ontario. The museum's administrative offices and scientific centres are housed at a separate location, the Natural Heritage Campus, in Gatineau, Quebec.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buffalo Museum of Science</span> Museum

The Buffalo Museum of Science is a science museum located at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Buffalo, New York, United States, northeast of the downtown district, near the Kensington Expressway. The historic building was designed by August Esenwein and James A. Johnson and opened on January 19, 1929. It gave a permanent home to the exhibits that started to be collected by the Buffalo Young Men's Association, which had passed them to its 1861 creation, the Buffalo Natural History Society, with George W. Clinton chosen as the Society's first president.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University</span> Natural history research institution and museum in Philadelphia, US

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1812, by many of the leading naturalists of the young American republic with an expressed mission of "the encouragement and cultivation of the sciences". It has sponsored expeditions, conducted original environmental and systematics research, and amassed natural history collections containing more than 17 million specimens. The Academy also organizes public exhibits and educational programs for both schools and the general public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Museum of Natural History</span> Natural history museum in Washington, D.C.

The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2022, with 3.9 million visitors, it was the most-visited museum in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denver Museum of Nature and Science</span> Museum in Denver, Colorado, U.S.

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is a municipal natural history and science museum in Denver, Colorado. It is a resource for informal science education in the Rocky Mountain region. A variety of exhibitions, programs, and activities help museum visitors learn about the natural history of Colorado, Earth, and the universe. The 716,000-square-foot (66,519 m2) building houses more than one million objects in its collections including natural history and anthropological materials, as well as archival and library resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Alberta Museum</span> History museum in Edmonton, Alberta

The Royal Alberta Museum (RAM) is a museum of human and natural history in Downtown Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, located north of City Hall. The museum is the largest in western Canada with more than 7,600 square metres (82,000 sq ft) exhibition space and 38,900 square metres (419,000 sq ft) in total.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burpee Museum of Natural History</span>

The Burpee Museum of Natural History is located along the Rock River in downtown Rockford, Illinois, United States, at 737 North Main Street.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Museum of Arts and Science</span> Museum in downtown Greenwich, Connecticut

The Bruce Museum is a regionally based, world-class museum located in Greenwich, Connecticut with a multi-disciplinary collection and exhibition program bringing together art, science, and natural history. Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the museum hosts changing exhibitions of art, photography, natural history, science, history and culture, with more than a dozen changing exhibits each year. The Museum is dedicated to serving both local and global audiences, encompassing perspectives of artists and scientists from all around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York State Museum</span> State museum of natural history, anthropology, and history in New York, United States

The New York State Museum is a research-backed institution in Albany, New York, United States. It is located on Madison Avenue, attached to the south side of the Empire State Plaza, facing onto the plaza and towards the New York State Capitol. The museum houses art, artifacts, and ecofacts that reflect New York’s cultural, natural, and geological development. Operated by the New York State Education Department's Office of Cultural Education, it is the oldest and largest state museum in the US. Formerly located in the State Education Building, the museum now occupies the first four floors of the Cultural Education Center, a ten-story, 1,500,000-square-foot (140,000 m2) building that also houses the New York State Archives and New York State Library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iziko South African Museum</span> South African national museum in Cape Town

The Iziko South African Museum is a South African national museum located in Cape Town. The museum was founded in 1825, the first in the country. It has been on its present site in the Company's Garden since 1897. The museum houses important African zoology, palaeontology and archaeology collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bell Museum of Natural History</span> Natural history museum of the University of Minnesota

The Bell Museum, formerly known as the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History, is located at the University of Minnesota. The museum's new location on the St. Paul campus opened in 2018. The Minnesota wildlife dioramas showcase animal specimens from around the world. The museum also houses the 120-seat digital Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium. The museum is part of the university's College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. The museum's former location in Minneapolis is closed in January 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano</span> Museum in Milan, Italy

The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano is a museum in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1838 when naturalist Giuseppe de Cristoforis donated his collections to the city. Its first director was Giorgio Jan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nature center</span> Facility designed for natural and environmental education

A nature center is an organization with a visitor center or interpretive center designed to educate people about nature and the environment. Usually located within a protected open space, nature centers often have trails through their property. Some are located within a state or city park, and some have special gardens or an arboretum. Their properties can be characterized as nature preserves and wildlife sanctuaries. Nature centers generally display small live animals, such as reptiles, rodents, insects, or fish. There are often museum exhibits and displays about natural history, or preserved mounted animals or nature dioramas. Nature centers are staffed by paid or volunteer naturalists and most offer educational programs to the general public, as well as summer camp, after-school and school group programs. These educational programs teach people about nature conservation as well as the scientific method, biology, and ecology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Booth Museum of Natural History</span> Natural history museum in East Sussex, England

Booth Museum of Natural History is a charitable trust managed, municipally-owned museum of natural history in the city of Brighton and Hove in the South East of England. Its focus is on Victorian taxidermy, especially of British birds, as well as collections focusing on entomology, chalk fossils, skeletons and botany. It is part of "Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust". Admission to the museum is free.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Michigan Museum of Natural History</span> United States historic place

The University of Michigan Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peabody Museum of Natural History</span> Natural history museum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA

The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is one of the oldest, largest, and most prolific university natural history museums in the world. It was founded by the philanthropist George Peabody in 1866 at the behest of his nephew Othniel Charles Marsh, an early paleontologist. The museum is best known for the Great Hall of Dinosaurs, which includes a mounted juvenile Brontosaurus and the 110-foot-long (34 m) mural The Age of Reptiles. The museum also has permanent exhibits dedicated to human and mammal evolution; wildlife dioramas; Egyptian artifacts; local birds and minerals; and Native Americans of Connecticut.

References

  1. Solari, Kevin; Wells, Matthew N. "Midwest Museum of Natural History in Sycamore closes doors permanently". The MidWeek. Archived from the original on July 29, 2020. Retrieved December 7, 2023.