Utah Museum of Natural History
The Rio Tinto Center, home of the museum since 2011
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| Established | 1963 |
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| Location | Salt Lake City, Utah, United States |
| Coordinates | 40°45′49″N 111°49′25″W / 40.76365°N 111.823505°W |
| Type | Natural history |
| Visitors | 278,000 annually |
| Website | http://nhmu.utah.edu/ |
The Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) is a museum located on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The museum shows exhibits of natural history subjects, with an emphasis on Utah and the Intermountain West. The mission of the museum is to illuminate the natural world and the place of humans within it. The new building, named the Rio Tinto Center, opened in November 2011.
The museum was conceived in 1959, when the University of Utah faculty committee decided to consolidate natural history collections from around its campus. The museum was established as the Utah Museum of Natural History on the University of Utah campus in 1963 by the Utah State Legislature. It opened in 1969 in the former George Thomas Library and included specimens from the Deseret Museum as well as from the Charles Nettleton Strevell Museum that was located in the old Lafayette School on South Temple Street from 1939 until 1947.
In 2011 the museum moved from the old George Thomas Library location at 1390 Presidents Circle into the Rio Tinto Center, in the University of Utah's Research Park 301 Wakara Way, Salt Lake City. The move also resulted in a change of name to the Natural History Museum of Utah.
The Rio Tinto Center is a 163,000-square-foot building set in foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. The building's highest point is a round structure on the back or east side which houses the Native Voices gallery. The architects for the building were Ennead Architects from New York City and GSBS of Salt Lake City. Ralph Appelbaum Associates designed the exhibits.
The Natural History Museum of Utah has more than 1.3 million objects in its collection that are used for research and education. The Museum's collections emphasize the natural history of Utah and are accessible to researchers from around the world. The majority of the collections are from public lands within the inter-mountain region of the United States.
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