National Museum of Natural History
Natural history museum in Washington, D.C. / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. With 4.4 million visitors in 2023, it was the second most-visited museum in the United States.[6]
Established | 1910; 114 years ago (1910) |
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Location | National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States |
Coordinates | 38.8913°N 77.0259°W / 38.8913; -77.0259 |
Type | Natural history museum |
Collection size | 146,000,000 specimens [1] |
Visitors | |
Director | Kirk Johnson |
Employees | 427 [1] |
Public transit access | at Federal Triangle |
Website | naturalhistory |
Opened in 1910, the museum on the National Mall was one of the first Smithsonian buildings constructed exclusively to hold the national collections and research facilities.[7] The main building has an overall area of 1.5 million square feet (140,000 m2) with 325,000 square feet (30,200 m2) of exhibition and public space and houses over 1,000 employees.[7]
The museum's collections contain over 146 million specimens[8] of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, the largest natural history collection in the world.[9] It is also home to about 185 professional natural history scientists—the largest group of scientists dedicated to the study of natural and cultural history in the world.