Natural history museum

A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a science museum with natural history collections. These collections hold records, both from today and from long ago, about animals, plants, fungi, and ecosystems, which are communities of living things and their surroundings.

Natural history museums also keep records about geology, the study of rocks and the Earth, and paleontology, the study of ancient life. They also cover climatology, which is the study of climate, and many other subjects.

For specific natural history museums, see Natural History Museum (disambiguation).

History

A natural history museum mainly gives scientists current and past specimens for their research, which helps us understand the natural world. Some museums also have public exhibits that share the beauty and wonder of nature with visitors. Early collections were often private, such as Renaissance cabinets of curiosities. The first natural history museum was possibly that of Swiss scholar Conrad Gessner, set up in Zürich in the mid-16th century. The National Museum of Natural History in Paris, founded in 1635, was the first to take the form that is recognized as a natural history museum today. The Ashmolean Museum, opened in England in 1683, was the first to let the general public in. Before the eighteenth century, collections were mostly kept in storage spaces, with artifacts displayed as catalogs of research findings. As museum buildings filled up and wealthy nations collected more objects from other countries, finding space became a growing problem. Museum funding also came from many sources, which led to different ways of developing and different goals.

Later, interest in science grew among the middle class, and museums began to change how they displayed objects for visitors. A dual arrangement, pioneered by J. Edward Gray, separated the researchers who produced science from the public who consumed it. Karl Mobias, a German zoologist, used this layout in Hamburg in 1866. Naturalists such as American Joseph Leidy wanted exhibits to show how organisms relate to one another, which led to the new job of curator. The League of Nations organized the first International Museography Congress in Madrid in 1934. The First World Congress on the Preservation and Conservation of Natural History Collections was held in Madrid from 10 May 1992 to 15 May 1992. Today, natural history collections hold genomic information that helps scientists study the history of biodiversity and environmental change. Researchers have used genetic samples from museum collections to study the domestication of the horse, and new methods are being developed to support museomics.