National Museum of Natural History

▪ museum, Washington, District of Coumbia, United States

      American museum of natural history, part of the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall (Mall, the) in Washington, D.C. (Washington)

      The Smithsonian Institution began gathering specimens of natural history in 1838 and continued collecting by gift, purchase, or expedition throughout the 19th century. In 1910 the collection was moved to its current location, a 1.5-million-square-foot (139,000-square-metre) building featuring a Roman-style portico entrance and a green domed rotunda. Its public and exhibition space amounts to 325,000 square feet (30,000 square metres). The Beaux-Arts exterior was designed by architects Daniel H. Burnham (Burnham, Daniel H.) and Charles McKim (McKim, Charles Follen). The Washington, D.C., firm Hornblower and Marshall designed the interior to maximize natural light and exhibit space. In 1969 the Smithsonian expanded the museum, adding east and west wings.

      The museum's collection contains both natural specimens—including, for example, approximately 30 million insects, 4.5 million plants, and 7 million fish—and cultural artifacts, such as some 400,000 photographs. Among the highlights of the collection are an exhibit on African elephants, a large exhibit on paleobiology that includes many dinosaur fossils, and an exhibit on gemstones that features the Hope diamond. In addition to laboratories and research facilities in the museum itself (including a fossil lab that allows visitors to watch paleontologists extract fossils and make plaster casts), the museum operates a marine research facility in Fort Pierce, Fla., and field stations throughout the world.

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