National Museum of Natural History

National Museum of Natural History, American museum of natural history, part of the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian Institution began gathering specimens of natural history in 1838 and continued collecting by gift, purchase, or expedition throughout the 19th century. In 1910 the collection was moved to its current location, a 1.5 million-square-foot (139,000-square-metre) building featuring a Roman-style portico entrance and a green domed rotunda. It was designed by the Washington, D.C., firm Hornblower and Marshall, with modifications by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead, and White. In 1965 the Smithsonian expanded the museum, adding east and west wings, and in 1983 it opened the Museum Support Center, a storage facility with laboratories for research and conservation, in Suitland, Maryland.

The museum’s collection contains both natural specimens—including, for example, millions of insects, plants, and fish—and cultural artifacts, such as hundreds of thousands of photographs. Among the highlights of the collection are an exhibit on African elephants, a large exhibit on paleobiology that includes many dinosaur fossils, and an exhibit on gemstones that features the Hope Diamond. In addition to laboratories and research facilities in the museum itself (including a fossil lab that allows visitors to watch paleontologists extract fossils and make plaster casts), the museum operates a marine research facility in Fort Pierce, Florida, and field stations throughout the world.