american museum of natural history

american museum of natural history

The Evolution and Impact of the American Museum of Natural History

1. Introduction to the American Museum of Natural History

The history of the Museum is replete with accounts of expeditions to exotic, unexplored lands, excited crowds gathered around huge elephant legs or enormous dinosaur skeletons, and heated debates over how to display such exotic specimens as cannibals and pygmies. It is also intertwined with the lives and activities of its many distinguished curatorial scientists. It would be impossible to mention them all, but they have included such famous names as Theodore Roosevelt, Roy Chapman Andrews, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Margaret Mead.

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is an institution with a mission of discovery and learning. It did not begin as a museum in the traditional sense. Its origins can be traced to explorations conducted by the United States Military Academy at West Point, which were conducted on a very ad hoc basis and were more reflective of a quest for knowledge about the natural environment than of a formal program of scientific exploration. To examine the complete history of the Museum would require a volume in itself. In fact, there have been at least two complete histories written, 75 years apart. For the purposes of this report, a highlight history is presented, primarily to illustrate how the roots of this huge and diverse institution are embedded in an era known for its quest for knowledge, and the tremendous economic and population expansion occurring in the United States.

2. Historical Development and Founding Principles

The history of the Museum, briefly dealt with, is as follows: The old Lyceum of Natural History brought together in the later thirties of the last century a small group of scientific men of the City of New York. Out of this small beginning expanded the noteworthy Academy of Natural Sciences. This last set the keystone of the foundations of the present American Museum of Natural History. It was owing to the expansionist tendencies of the Academy that the need for more room for the existing collections made obligatory a transfer to the present site at Central Park. And in order to provide room over a period sufficient to permit of future expansion and yet be near the old commercial center of the City of New York, two blocks and the Park site were purchased on a purchase money mortgage that stressed the finances of the new organization to an extent noticed only by the original founders and a few intimate friends. Thus was the present-day development secured.

In the later years of the 19th century, the formal collegiate education in the natural sciences was not extensive, and the largest proportion of persons engaged in the investigation and the study of the natural phenomena that came within the record of the natural history of man, himself one of the forms of animal life—zoology were largely self-taught. Quite naturally, scientific men in surrounding towns sought in increasing numbers the cooperation of their neighbors. Around informal groups of this nature has sprung up the present great Museum of Natural History. It was not until the early beginnings of the Institution had passed through their adolescent stages that the real flowering of the Museum began and it assumed its present proportions.

3. Significant Collections and Exhibitions

The AMNH’s most unique collections are the historical and anthropological. The museum holds the majority of the original and casted bones of Ardipithecus ramidus. It is unclear how the museum acquired these remains but it is known that the Washington Post bought and housed four of the initial discovery team members in a museum suite. Their wish was not to work in a particular institution, and talk to as many museum representatives as they could before selling the remains, however the patrons were primarily interested in finding someone who would offer the largest sum of money. The PMNH needed the funds and a PR team, and as a result were able to win the bidding war by offering 1.3 million dollars for the privilege of housing the remains for two to four years. That initial time was expended through an extension by the Ethiopian Government in 2009, and at present only 15 replicas are allowed to travel to exhibitions on Middle Awash fossils, having been allowed to be removed.

The AMNH has strengths across a variety of disciplines, the majority of which have been collected from the organization’s inception to the present day. The larger, older collections tend to go in cycles based on researcher interest, and because the museum’s collection has grown over time, many of these groups are still relatively unexamined. Mammalogy has been a particularly strong collection and one of the oldest collections in the museum. Ornithology is more commonly referenced in the archives, most likely the result of birds being easier to collect, and therefore acquired in larger numbers prior to 1900. Randall et al provided a snapshot of the Herpetology’s holdings up until 1956. By 2006, Ichthyology had the third largest collection worldwide, available due largely to a strong curator as well as the access that the AMNH members had for several decades to one of the largest cichlid radiations in Africa.

4. Educational and Outreach Programs

There has been a notable increase in the number of visitors to our public programs outside of school hours. These programs—Family Science and Sleepovers—give families and children the opportunity to visit the museum during off-peak hours to participate in a variety of exhibits powered activities that are both informal and educational. In both of these settings, the museum becomes a lively, noisy, and fun venue filled with excited visitors of all ages. In this setting, children interact directly with science professionals, a rarity in museum experiences, even in places like the Museum of Natural History. All of the accommodations for work with individual schools or school districts have been made for families and their children with disabilities. For example, the museum has created large-print visitor maps, and written and audio descriptions are available for major galleries.

To further the reach of the M.E.T. and to give visitors an even deeper exposure to the core ideas of these curriculum-based activities and presentations, this program uses a cadre of college students majoring in science and science education from NYU, Barnard, and Columbia as instructors. Families are provided with a variety of age-appropriate, accessible scientific investigations that they can pursue in the gallery. Families working together to engage in the same kinds of hands-on, minds-on, authentic activities that are part of the school program ensures a rewarding museum visit. The benefit for both students and families is significant. As museum visitors are not usually asked to actively engage with the resources available to them in natural history museums, many people miss the opportunities to practice critical scientific thinking and literacy of such collaboratively enjoyable interactions.

5. Influence on Science and Society

The museum has served New Yorkers and their institutions for more than one hundred years, is the public museum not only for the state of New York but also for the United States, has a scientific staff of over 180, which is equivalent to that of a university, holds one of the world’s richest libraries for natural and cultural history as well as a vast number of artifacts and scientific collections from around the world. As one of the major natural history museums in the United States where the study of the world’s biodiversity and cultural heritages is conducted, public appreciation of natural history has been raised to an important level. These activities have been inseparable from the effective control of the collections in the museum during the last few decades. In this report, we detail some of the ways in which the museum influences scientific research and development within the broader scientific communities.

At every turn, the American Museum of Natural History has sought and found opportunities to reach out to the general public and educators, to foster exchanges in scientific knowledge and discussion, to engage scholars in productive examination of its resources, and to contribute actively to the scientific understanding of solutions to public concerns. The museum is an important source of scientific information not only for the state of New York and the national government, but for all parts of the world. First among its many boundaries of interest has been the ability to ask the right questions, to carry out museum programs that build from our vast natural and cultural inheritances, and to use the museum as a place not only for learning but for discovery.