The Field Museum of Natural History
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 Location in Chicago
Location in Chicago
Location in Chicago
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| Established | 1893 |
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| Location | 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Coordinates | 41°51′58″N 87°37′01″W / 41.866110°N 87.616940°W |
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Field Museum of Natural History
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| Built | 1921 |
| Architect | William Peirce Anderson of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White |
| Architectural style | Classical Revival |
| NRHP Reference # | 75000647 |
| Added to NRHP | September 5, 1975 |
The Field Museum of Natural History, also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum maintains its status as a premier natural history museum through the size and quality of its educational and scientific programs, as well as due to its extensive scientific specimen and artifact collections. The diverse, high quality permanent exhibitions, which attract up to two million visitors annually, range from the earliest fossils to past and current cultures from around the world to interactive programming demonstrating today's urgent conservation needs.
Additionally, the Field Museum maintains a temporary exhibition program of traveling shows as well as in-house produced topical exhibitions. The professional staff maintains collections of over 24 million specimens and objects that provide the basis for the museum’s scientific research programs. These collections include the full range of existing biodiversity, gems, meteorites, fossils, as well as rich anthropological collections and cultural artifacts from around the globe. The Field Museum Library, which contains over 275,000 books, journals, and photo archives focused on biological systematics, evolutionary biology, geology, archaeology, ethnology and material culture, supports the Field Museum’s academic research faculty and exhibit development.
The Field Museum academic faculty and scientific staff engage in field expeditions, in biodiversity and cultural research on all continents, in local and foreign student training, in stewardship of the rich specimen and artifact collections, and work in close collaboration with public programming exhibitions and education initiatives.
The Field Museum and its collections originated from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the artifacts displayed at the fair.In order to house the exhibits and collections assembled for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair for future generations, Edward Ayer convinced the merchant Marshall Field to fund the establishment of a museum. Originally titled the Columbian Museum of Chicago in honor of its origins, the Field Museum was incorporated by the State of Illinois on September 16, 1893, for the purpose of the "accumulation and dissemination of knowledge, and the preservation and exhibition of artifacts illustrating art, archaeology, science and history." The Columbian Museum of Chicago occupied the only building remaining from the World's Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park, the Palace of Fine Arts, which now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.
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