Burke Museum

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The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
Burke Museum totem poles 01.jpg
Totem poles in the grounds of the Burke Museum
Data
place Seattle , United States
Art
architect James Chiarelli
opening 1899
operator
management
Julie Stein (since 2005)
Website
[1]

The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture is a natural history and ethnographic museum on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle , Washington in the United States , which was founded in the 1899th It is the only major natural history museum in the Pacific Northwest and the oldest museum in Washington State. Its collection includes more than 12 million artifacts and specimens, including totem poles and dinosaurs - fossils . The objects in his collection come primarily from Washington state.

history

The museum can be traced back to the Young Naturalists' Society , a natural history association that was founded in the early 1880s. This association had contacts with Professor Orson Bennet Johnson of the Washington Territorial University , which later became the University of Washington . Johnson gave the association professional structures and helped members with their activities, including the collection and storage of artifacts. He also advocated making the resulting collection accessible to the public and got the university to provide space on campus for this purpose.

The first museum building had to be vacated when the university moved its campus to the north of the city of Seattle . The members of the association erected a temporary building on the new campus, which was declared a Washington State Museum by the state parliament in 1899 . The Young Naturalists' Society was dissolved in 1904.

The current building of the museum was built in 1963 according to plans by James Chiarelli . The construction was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and also supported by funds from the estate of Thomas Burke (1849-1925), in honor of which the name of the museum was changed to Burke Museum .

Collections

The museum is divided into an anthropological , a biological and a geological section. Worth mentioning are among others:

  • The world's largest collection of groomed bird wings.
  • The world's second largest collection of frozen avian tissue for genetic research.
  • The Kennewick Man , a controversial find that doesn't match other prehistoric human remains from the same area.
  • The fifth largest collection of coastal Salish , Inland Salish, and Native Alaskan artifacts in the United States.
  • The fourth largest ichthyological collection west of the Mississippi.
  • Over a million archaeological artifacts from Washington State.

Exhibitions

Permanent exhibitions

The museum has three permanent exhibits: Life and Times of Washington State is a natural history exhibit that depicts the evolution of living things on the territory of what is now Washington State over 545 million years. This includes, among other things, a skeletal cast of an Allosaurus and fossils of a giant sloth . Pacific Voices is an ethnographic exhibition about various peoples of the Pacific coast with a special focus on the coastal Salish. Finally, Treasures of the Burke shows some of the most popular objects from the museum's collections.

Temporary exhibitions

In addition to its three permanent exhibitions, the museum also houses temporary exhibitions from its own collection as well as from other museums. Traveling exhibitions can also be seen regularly.

administration

The museum is administered by the University of Washington's College of Arts and Sciences . The members of the Board of Trustees are elected by the University's Board of Regents . There is also the Burke Museum Association , whose Board of Trustees is responsible for the museum's public relations in collaboration with the Advisory Council . The museum has an annual budget of 3.5 million US dollars , which is composed of government contributions, private donations and the sale of tickets.

Web links

Commons : Burke Museum  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ University of Washington> Department of Anthropology> University of Washington (Faculty): Julie K. Stein
  2. ↑ a b Ornithology - Burke Museum
  3. ↑ Kennewick Man On Trial ( Memento April 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ^ Ethnology Collections - Burke Museum
  5. ↑ Ichthyology - Burke Museum
  6. ^ Archeology Collections - Burke Museum

Coordinates: 47 ° 39 ′ 39.5 "  N , 122 ° 18 ′ 35.2"  W.