American Museum of Natural History

HOURS
The Museum is open daily, 10:00 a.m.—5:45 p.m.
The Museum is closed Thanksgiving and Christmas.

SPACE SHOW HOURS
Monday - Friday: Every half hour, 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. except Wednesdays (first show on Wednesday begins at 11:00 a.m.)
Saturday - Sunday: Every half hour, 10:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Hours are subject to change.

ADMISSION
Adults:  $15.00
Children (2-12):  $8.50
Senior/Student with ID:  $11.00
Member Adult:  Free
Member Child:  Free

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world. The collections contain over 32 million specimens, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum has a scientific staff of more than 200, and sponsors over 100 special field expeditions each year.

The museum was founded in 1869. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., the father of the 26th U.S. President, was one of the founders along with many other notabale New Yorker's of the time. The founding of the Museum realized the dream of naturalist Dr. Albert S. Bickmore. Bickmore, a one-time student of Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, lobbied tirelessly for years for the establishment of a natural history museum in New York.

Famous names associated with the museum include the paleontologist and geologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, president for many years; the dinosaur-hunter of the Gobi Desert, Roy Chapman Andrews (one of the inspirations for Indiana Jones); George Gaylord Simpson; biologist Ernst Mayr; pioneer cultural anthropologists Franz Boas and Margaret Mead; and ornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy. J. P. Morgan was also among the famous benefactors of the Museum. The philanthropist Harry Payne Whitney financed the Whitney South Seas Expedition (1920-1932) for the Museum, greatly expanding its collection of biological and anthropological specimens from the south-west Pacific region.

From its founding in 1880, the Library of the American Museum of Natural History has grown into one of the world's great natural history collections. The collection contains over 450,000 volumes of monographs, serials, pamphlets and reprints, microforms, and original illustrations, as well as film, photographic, archives and manuscripts, fine art, memorabilia and rare book collections. The Library collects materials covering such subjects as mammalogy, geology, anthropology, entomology, herpetology, ichthyology, paleontology, ethology, ornithology, mineralogy, invertebrates, systematics, ecology, oceanography, conchology, exploration and travel, history of science, museology, bibliography, and peripheral biological sciences. The collection is rich in retrospective materials — some going back to the 15th century — that are difficult to find elsewhere.

Sourced from Wikipedia