A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more.
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more.
The primary role of a natural history museum is to provide the scientific community with current and historical specimens for their research, which is to improve our understanding of the natural world. [1] Some museums have public exhibits to share the beauty and wonder of the natural world with the public; these are referred to as 'public museums'. Some museums feature non-natural history collections in addition to their primary collections, such as ones related to history, art, and science.
Renaissance cabinets of curiosities were private collections that typically included exotic specimens of national history, sometimes faked, along with other types of object. The first natural history museum was possibly that of Swiss scholar Conrad Gessner, established in Zürich in the mid-16th century. [2] The National Museum of Natural History, established in Paris in 1635, was the first natural history museum to take the form that would be recognized as a natural history museum today. [2] Early natural history museums offered limited accessibility, as they were generally private collections or holdings of scientific societies. [3] The Ashmolean Museum, opened in 1683, was the first natural history museum to grant admission to the general public. [3]
The natural history museum did not exist as a typical museum prior to the eighteenth century. Civic and university buildings did exist to house collections used for conducting research, however these served more as storage spaces than museums by today's understanding. [4] All kept artifacts were displayed to the public as catalogs of research findings and served mostly as an archive of scientific knowledge. These spaces housed as many artifacts as fit and offered little description or interpretation for visitors. [5] Kept organisms were typically arranged in their taxonomic systems and displayed with similar organisms. Museums did not think of the possibility of diverse audiences, instead adopting the view of an expert as the standard. [6]
The mid-eighteenth century saw an increased interest in the scientific world by the middle class bourgeoisie who had greater time for leisure activities, physical mobility and educational opportunities than in previous eras. [7] Other forms of science consumption, such as the zoo, had already grown in popularity. Now, the natural history museum was a new space for public interaction with the natural world. Museums began to change the way they exhibited their artifacts, hiring various forms of curators, to refine their displays. [4] Additionally, they adopted new approaches to designing exhibits. These new ways of organizing would support learning of the lay audience. [8]
Organised by the League of Nations, the first International Museography Congress happened in Madrid in 1934. [9] Again, the First World Congress on the Preservation and Conservation of Natural History Collections took place in Madrid, from 10 May 1992 to 15 May 1992. [10]
While the museum buildings where collections of artifacts were displayed started to overflow with materials, the prospect of a new building space would take years to build. As wealthy nations began to collect exotic artifacts and organisms from other countries, this problem continued to worsen. Museum funding came from a mixed bag of state or provincial support as well as university funding, causing differing systems of development and goals. [11]
Opportunities for a new public audience coupled with overflowing artifact collections led to a new design for natural history museums. A dual arrangement of museums was pioneered by J. Edward Gray, who worked with the British Museum in the 1860s. This layout separated the science-producing researcher from the science-consuming public audience. [4] By doing so, museums were able to save space in the exhibit areas and display a smaller, more focused amount of material to the public. This also allowed for greater curation of exhibits that eased the lay viewer's learning and allowed them to develop a more holistic understanding of the natural world. Natural history museums became a story of our world, telling different organisms narratives. [8] Use of dual arrangement was quickly adopted and advocated by many across the world. A notable proponent of its use was German zoologist Karl Mobias who divided the natural museum in Hamburg in 1866. [4]
The goal of such museums was not only to display organisms, but detail their interactions in the human world as well as within their unique ecosystems. Naturalists such as American Joseph Leidy pushed for greater emphasis on the biological perspective in exhibits to teach the public more about the functional relationships between organisms. [8] This required the expertise of zoologist and botanist. As this kind of work was not typical for educated scientists of the time, the new profession of curator developed.
Natural history collections are invaluable repositories of genomic information that can be used to examine the histories of biodiversity and environmental change. [12] [13] Collaborations between museums and researchers worldwide are enabling scientists to unravel ecological and evolutionary relationships such as the domestication of the horse, using genetic samples from museum collections. [14] [15] New methods and technologies are being developed to support museomics. [12] [16]
A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying and preserving culturally significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Compared to a library, a museum hosts a much wider ranges of objects and usually focus around a specific theme such as the arts, science, natural history, local history, and other topics. Public museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often considered to be tourist attractions, and many museums attract large numbers of visitors from outside their host country, with the most visited museums in the world regularly attracting millions of visitors annually.
A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of subject matter and introduced many interactive exhibits. Modern science museums, increasingly referred to as 'science centres' or 'discovery centres', also feature technology.
The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road.
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.
A curator is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular institution and its mission. The term "curator" may designate the head of any given division, not limited to museums. Curator roles include "community curators", "literary curators", "digital curators", and "biocurators".
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.
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture is a natural history museum in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. Established in 1899 as the Washington State Museum, it traces its origins to a high school naturalist club formed in 1879. The museum is the oldest in Washington state and boasts a collection of more than 16 million artifacts, including the world's largest collection of spread bird wings. Located on the campus of the University of Washington, the Burke Museum is the official state museum of Washington.
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.
The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a natural history museum located on the northern border of Hermann Park in Houston, Texas, United States. The museum was established in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, an organization whose goals were to provide a free institution for the people of Houston focusing on education and science. The museum complex consists of a central facility with four floors of natural science halls and exhibits, the Burke Baker Planetarium, the Cockrell Butterfly Center, and the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre. In 2022, the museum received 1,520,000 visitors, making it seventh on the List of most-visited museums in the United States, and was the third most-visited U.S. science museum. Much of the museum's popularity is attributed to its large number of special or guest exhibits.
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.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, also known affectionately by locals as "the Whale Museum", is one of the earliest museums in the state of California. Founded from the Laura Hecox collection in 1905, the museum's collections grew extensively throughout the years, acquiring many Native American and archaeological artifacts, as well as natural history specimens. Currently, the museum is housed in a Carnegie Library, named after the Carnegie philanthropic foundation that funded the construction of the library in 1915.
The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (NCMNS) is a museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. The museum is the oldest in the state.
Geppi's Entertainment Museum was a 16,000-square-foot privately owned pop culture museum located at historic Camden Station at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland. The museum chronicled the history of pop culture in America from the 17th century to the early 21st century, as made popular in newspapers, magazines, comic books, movies, television, radio and video games. It featured a collection of nearly 60,000 pop culture artifacts, including magazines, movie posters, toys, buttons, badges, cereal boxes, trading cards, dolls, figurines, and other memorabilia.
The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland is a museum of Scottish history and culture.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is a national museum of science and technology in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The museum has a mandate to preserve and promote the country's scientific and technological heritage. The museum is housed in a 13,458 square metres (144,860 sq ft) building. The museum is operated by Ingenium, a Crown corporation that also operates two other national museums of Canada.
The University of Michigan Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States.
The Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology is a paleontology museum in Claremont, California, that is part of The Webb Schools. It is the only nationally accredited museum on a secondary school campus in the United States. The museum has two circular 4,000 sq. ft. exhibition halls and 20,000 unique annual visitors. The collections number about 140,000 specimens, 95% of which were found by Webb students on fossil-collecting trips called “Peccary Trips,” expeditions usually centered in California, Utah, and Montana. The collections consist primarily of vertebrate, invertebrate, and track fossils and the museum's large track collection is widely recognized as one of the most diverse in the world.
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.
The 136 museums in the city of Paris display many historical, scientific, and archeological artifacts from around the world, covering diverse and unique topics including fashion, theater, sports, cosmetics, and the culinary arts.
Museomics is the study of genomic data obtained from ancient DNA (aDNA) and historic DNA (hDNA) specimens in museum collections. Early research in this area focused on short sequences of DNA from mitochondrial genes, but sequencing of whole genomes has become possible. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) and high-throughput sequencing (HTS) methods can be applied to the analysis of genetic datasets extracted from collections materials. Such techniques have been described as a "third revolution in sequencing technology". Like radiocarbon dating, the techniques of museomics are a transformative technology. Results are revising and sometimes overturning previously accepted theories about a wide variety of topics such as the domestication of the horse.
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