Natural History Museum Basel

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Entrance area

The Natural History Museum Basel " Archive of Life" is a natural history museum in Basel . It was founded in 1821 and has been in the museum on Augustinergasse, which opened at the time, since 1849 . It covers most areas of science . Its mission is to expand, preserve, research, document and convey the scientific collections. Director Hans Walter Schaub modernized the presentation from 1959 to 1979.

Exhibitions

Covering an area of 2,100 m 2 , the museum displays permanent exhibitions on different themes: the scene of nature ( birds , mammals & Minerals Switzerland), ammonite & Thunderbolt ( fossils of the region Basel), Fire & Water (Dynamics of the Earth), Dino & dinosaur (Dinosaurs & their environment), mammoth & saber-toothed tiger (evolution of mammals), squid & butterflies (invertebrates), quagga & dodo (threatened & extinct species), whale & fish (fish, frogs and reptiles), loophole (development of a swallowtail from egg to butterfly). Live animals can also be seen: honey bees and a colony of leaf cutter ants .

Special exhibitions that put scientific questions in a contemporary, current context complement the permanent exhibition. For example with the topic “ Deep Sea ” (2007/2008), “The Flies ” (2008/2009) “ Messel , Urpferd & Co.” (2009/2010), “Hard work - when skeletons tell” (2011/2012), “ Parasites ” (2014/2015), “ Mummies - Riddles of Time” (2016/2017) or “On the way in the ear ” (2018/2019 ). The museum repeatedly puts on special exhibitions that combine nature and art; for example “Animatus” (2008) or “ Microsculpture. Levon bite. Photographs of Insects »(2017). The museum has shown the " Wildlife Photographer of the Year " touring exhibition developed by the Natural History Museum London several times .

Collections

The museum was opened in Falkensteinerhof in 1821, but the oldest collections go back to the Amerbachkabinett . This is a 16th century cabinet of curiosities that the city and the University of Basel acquired in 1661 and made available to the public.

Today the Natural History Museum Basel houses over 11.8 million objects. The collections are kept under the title "Archives of Life" and are constantly being expanded. The museum holds collections that are famous and unique around the world.

The collection inventory includes:

  • Vertebrates (recent) approx. 95,982 objects
  • Invertebrates (recent) approx. 5,637,500 objects
  • Paleontology approx. 5,906,400 objects
  • Mineralogy approx. 125,000 objects
  • Anthropology approx. 7,800 objects
  • Tissue samples for genetic analysis: under construction
  • DNA extractions: under construction

research

Around 100 employees of the Natural History Museum are involved in anthropological , classic bioscientific and geoscientific research projects that are nationally and internationally networked. This results in several dozen scientific papers year after year. At the same time, scholars from abroad repeatedly write publications on objects from the museum's collections.

In anthropology , the living conditions and the medical history of people whose skeletons have been found in various excavations in the city of Basel, z. B. in the old St. Johann hospital cemetery. The mummy of Anna Catharina Bischoff , which was found in 1975 during excavations in the Barfüsserkirche , is also kept and examined here. Theo the pipe smoker's skeleton is also here. It was found during excavations in 1984.

In bioscientific research, the focus is on systematics , phylogeny , ecology and nature conservation biology . The geoscientific research focuses on the evolution of mammals ( systematics , phylogeny , biodiversity ), the foraminifera and the paleoecology of the earlier marine ecosystems.

building

The decidedly monumental building was built between 1842 and 1849 under the architect Melchior Berri as a museum and university building. In 1848 Johann Jakob Oechslin created the allegorical frieze . Berri received an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel for this building, which is considered his main work . The building is an early example of a civic museum. Three frescoes by Arnold Böcklin can be seen in the main staircase .

In May 2019, the voters of the canton of Basel-Stadt confirmed that the museum, together with the Basel-Stadt State Archives , should move into a new building on the area of the Basel St. Johann train station . The planned move-in date is 2024/25.

Web links

Commons : Natural History Museum Basel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Natural History Museum Basel, as of July 3, 2018
  2. ↑ Natural History Museum Basel, Project Death Age Estimation - The Basel Project , as of December 9, 2009
  3. ^ Natural History Museum Basel, Research on Biosciences , as of December 9, 2009
  4. ↑ Naturhistorisches Museum Basel, Geosciences Research , as of December 9, 2009
  5. ^ Dorothee Huber: Architekturführer Basel, The building history of the city and its surroundings . Architekturmuseum Basel, Basel 1993, p. 112 ff.
  6. ^ Basler Zeitung, Tamedia Espace AG: Clear yes to the new museum building . ISSN  1420-3006 ( bazonline.ch [accessed June 9, 2019]).
  7. ↑ Natural History Museum and State Archives, new building. Retrieved June 9, 2019 .

Coordinates: 47 ° 33 '27.5 "  N , 7 ° 35' 25.8"  E ; CH1903:  611,432  /  two hundred and sixty-seven thousand four hundred and forty-seven