The Harvard Museum of Natural History is a

natural history museum 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. ...

housed in the University Museum Building, located on the campus of

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. It features 16 galleries with 12,000 speciments drawn from the collections of the University's three natural history research museums: the

Harvard University Herbaria The Harvard University Herbaria and Botanical Museum are institutions located on the grounds of Harvard University at 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Botanical Museum is one of three which comprise the Harvard Museum of Natura ...

, the

Museum of Comparative Zoology A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

, and the Harvard Mineralogical Museum. The museum is physically connected to the

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, wi ...

at 26 Oxford Street. One admission grants visitors access to both museums. In 2012, Harvard formed a new consortium, the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, whose members are the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the

Semitic Museum The Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE, previously the Harvard Semitic Museum) is a museum founded in 1889. It moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1903. Description From the beginning, ...

, the Peabody Museum, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

History

The Harvard Museum of Natural History was created in 1998 as the "public face" of three research museums—the

, the Harvard Mineralogical and Geological Museum, and the

. Its exhibitions draw on Harvard University's natural history collections. Harvard's research faculty provides expertise and programs for members and the general public provide an exchange of information and ideas. With more than 210,000 visitors in 2013, the Harvard Museum of Natural History is the university's most-visited museum.

Exhibits

In the museum's permanent galleries, visitors encounter the diversity of life on Earth, from dinosaurs to

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

invertebrates and reptiles, to large

mammals Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur o ...

birds Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

and

fish Fish are Aquatic animal, aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack Limb (anatomy), limbs with Digit (anatomy), digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as we ...

, and the only mounted ''

Kronosaurus ''Kronosaurus'' ( ; meaning "lizard of Kronos") is a potentially dubious genus of extinct short-necked pliosaur. With an estimated length of , it was among the largest pliosaurs, and is named after the leader of the Greek Titans, Kronos. It ...

''. The mineralogical galleries present a systematic display of

meteorites A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object ...

, minerals and

gemstones A gemstone (also called a fine gem, jewel, precious stone, or semiprecious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli, opal, a ...

. The galleries also house the historic '' Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants'', popularly known as the Glass Flowers, and the exhibit ''Sea Creatures in Glass'', displaying some of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology's collection of the Blaschka models of marine invertebrates. In addition, a series of changing exhibitions bring focus to new research at the University.

Programs

The museum offers educational programs and has a partnership with Cambridge public schools; offers public lectures by Harvard biologists, international conservationists, and popular authors; and has a travel program where small groups are led by Harvard science faculty to biodiverse locations.

Operations

The museum is member-based, with over 3,200 current members, primarily from the Boston metropolitan area. While the museum is affiliated with the Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and receives important support from the University, it derives most of its operating income from admissions, membership, gifts, and programmatic revenues.

References

External links