Smithsonian national museum of natural history founded

Explore the natural world around you, discover dinosaur fossils and more at this free gem on the National Mall.

Planning your visit to the Natural History Museum

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History opened in 1910 to invoke discovery and education of the natural world. Its green dome and immense size (comparable to 18 football fields) are signatures, as well as the 140 million-plus natural science specimens and cultural artifacts that the museum contains.

The Museum of Natural History is centrally located in Washington, DC on the National Mall. Like all Smithsonian Institution museums, admission is free. Its regular hours are 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m., but hours are extended during the spring and summer with a closing time of 7:30 p.m. The museum is open every day of the year except Dec. 25. The most convenient way to reach the museum is via public transportation. Public parking is scarce, but there are parking spaces available for visitors with disabilities. If using Metrorail, take the Orange or Blue lines to the Smithsonian station and use the Mall exit. If taking Metrobus, use the 32, 34 or 36 routes.

What’s inside the National Museum of Natural History?

The museum contains some of the most famous artifacts in the world. The Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals has the supposedly cursed Hope Diamond on display. Meanwhile, Q?rius, the museum’s education center, offers teens and tweens a lab where they can make their own scientific discoveries.

After a five-year renovation, the museum has reopened its David H. Koch Hall of Fossils. The 31,000-square-foot exhibit’s theme is Deep Time, borrowed from a scientific phrase that illustrates how Earth’s history has played out over billions of years. Prepare to be amazed, overwhelmed, engaged and dazzled by one of the biggest exhibitions to come to DC in years.

Other permanent exhibits include an insect zoo and The Sant Ocean Hall, which features an exact replica of a living North Atlantic right whale.

The National Museum of Natural History is the most-visited natural history museum in the United States. Dedicated to inspiring curiosity and discovery of the natural world, the National Museum of Natural History preserves and interprets natural science, geology, and anthropology collections. The current building on the National Mall opened in 1910. Among the most popular exhibits are the Hall of Dinosaurs, Egyptian and Roman artifacts, the Hope Diamond, and the sarcophagus of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen.

The National Museum of Natural History building was opened in 1910 and is designed in the neoclassical style.

The grand rotunda houses an African elephant that debuted in 1959. At the time, it was the largest land mammal on exhibit at a museum. Photo courtesy Ingfbruno, Wikimedia.

Ground is broken for the new building in 1904. Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Exhibit staff prepare a display of white-tailed deer. Photo circa 1950s, courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Entomology staff stand among millions of insects in the Smithsonian collection. Photo by Chip Clark.

Even before the Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1848, Americans were collecting specimens and objects that would later fill the largest natural history museum in the United States. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, collecting was a way of categorizing and making sense of the American landscape. Formal collecting was usually a leisure activity reserved for wealthy individuals, who then displayed these collections in “curiosity cabinets” in their homes. The United States government also supported geological expeditions to map locations for transportation routes and military posts, and the ambitious United States Exploring Expedition, which surveyed the Pacific between 1838 and 1842. When British scientist James Smithson gifted his estate to found “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge” in Washington, D.C.,” the young democracy faced a fundamental dilemma. Should the United States government to create a national institution, and what should this institution look like? For more than ten years, Congress grappled with questions of government authority, federal expansion, and Smithson’s broad vision. In the end, they decided the Smithsonian gave an opportunity for the United States to stand among established nations in science and culture, and the Smithsonian Institution was signed into law on August 10, 1846.1

In 1855, the National Museum opened at the Smithsonian Institution Building, more commonly known as “the Castle.” Originally, the National Museum held historical, archaeological, and natural history collections together. While some collections were purchased or donated, most were collected on expeditions initiated by the first Smithsonian curator, Spencer F. Baird. Yet these collecting efforts proved so successful that the Smithsonian ran out of space in the Castle and in the National Museum Building, now the Arts and Industries Building, opened in 1881. In 1902, Congress approved construction of a new museum as part of the 1901 McMillan Commission Plan, which helped create the National Mall as it is today. The McMillan Plan proposed removing the Victorian landscaping and replacing it with grass and building neoclassical style museums, educational centers, and memorials along the Mall.2 

The current natural history museum building, then the new National Museum, opened on March 17, 1910. The building was inspired by Roman architecture with the granite columnns and dome. Like in the past, this museum housed natural history collections among history, art, and archaeology. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that the National Museum separated natural history specimens from historical artifacts, reflecting broader shifts in the museum profession and academic disciplines of science, history, anthropology, and art. In 1969, after the National Museum was dissolved, the building was renamed the National Museum of Natural History and fully dedicated itself to pursuits of scientific research, collection, and education.3

Today, the National Museum of Natural History holds more than 126 million natural science specimens and cultural artifacts, both on site and in off-site storage facilities. There are permanent exhibitions dedicated to human origins and culture, paleontology, mammals, ocean life, insects, bones, and geology. Research covers a broad spectrum of science and is conducted at the museum and in laboratories, field stations, and libraries around the world. An Office of Repatriation inventories the origins of cultural artifacts and human remains in the collection and can return them to federally recognized indigenous groups. Since the founding of the Smithsonian Institution, science has transitioned from an exclusive pursuit of wealthy, highly educated individuals to one that can be studied and enjoyed by all walks of life. To bridge the scientific and public communities, the Museum offers programs, citizen science projects, and a science education center, Q?rius. The National Museum of Natural History welcomes millions of visitors each year to explore wonders of the world.4

1. Meringolo, Museums, Monuments, and National Parks, 5-17; Smithsonian Institution, "National Museum of Natural History," Smithsonian Institution Archives. 
2. Smithsonian Institution, "National Museum of Natural History," Smithsonian Institution Archives; "McMillan Plan," Wikipedia.
3. Smithsonian Institution, "National Museum of Natural History," Smithsonian Institution Archives; Smithsonian Institution, "A Brief History," National Museum of Natural History. 
4. Smithsonian Institution, "About the Museum," National Museum of Natural History.

"McMillan Plan." Wikipedia. Accessed September 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMillan_Plan

Meringolo, Denise D. Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History. University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.

Smithsonian Institution. "About the Museum." National Museum of Natural History. Accessed September 2017. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/about/

Smithsonian Institution. "A Brief History." National Museum of Natural History. Accessed September 2017. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/onehundredyears/brief_history.htm

Smithsonian Institution. "National Museum of Natural History." Smithsonian Institution Archives. Accessed September 2017. https://siarchives.si.edu/history/national-museum-natural-history

Images:

"Natural History Building Ground Breaking." Photo. 1904. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95, Box 56, Folder 9. Accessed September 2017. https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_9689

"Preparing Deer Group in Natural History." Photo. Circa 1950s. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 9516. Accessed September 2017. https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_9844

Clark, Chip. "NMNH Collections Program Photo Gallery." National Museum of Natural History. Washington, D.C. Accessed September 2017. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/rc/cp/collPhotoGallery.htm

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