Everything about Santa Barbara Museum Of Natural History totally explained
The
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is the oldest museum in
Santa Barbara, California, founded in
1916. The museum is located in
Mission Canyon, immediately behind the
Santa Barbara Mission. Set in a traditional southern California environment, the museum campus occupies 12 acres (49,000 m²) of oak woodland along Mission Creek. It is housed in a
mission-style, Spanish Mediterranean complex of buildings. The museum has 5,700 members and more than 150,000 people visit the Museum each year.
History
The early roots of the Museum date back to the 1890's, when a group of professional and amateur scientists started the Santa Barbara Natural History Society and an accompanying museum at 1226
State Street. Though the effort waned at the end of the century, the arrival of
ornithologist William Leon Dawson from Ohio re-ignited the effort. Dawson and a group of prominent Santa Barbarans founded the Museum of Comparative Oology, which was first located in two outbuildings on his property on Puesta del Sol in
Mission Canyon. The initial holdings were assembled from his own extensive collection of bird eggs as well as collections of other community members. According to the Museum's website, Dawson believed
oology—the study of bird eggs—“would throw a flood of light upon the trend of life itself,” yielding “the secrets of life’s origins and its destiny.”
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Though it began from a collection of bird eggs, the holdings of the Museum were soon expanded into other realms by its Board of Directors. The successor to William Dawson as director was Ralph Hoffmann, a
Harvard-trained educator,
botanist, and
ornithologist. The next director Paul Marshall Rhea who had been President of the American Association of Museums, Director of the
Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Director of the
Carnegie Foundation in
Washington, D.C.. Some of the notable benfactors of the Museum included Dr. Caroline Hazard who was President of
Wellesley College at the time: she donated part of her estate in
Mission Canyon for a new museum building. This building was built with funds donated by Mrs. Rowland G. Hazard in memory of her late husband and opened in 1923.
In 1937, Arthur Sterry Coggeshall came to Santa Barbara, and took the position of Director of the Museum. He had also worked at various prestigious museums, such as the
American Museum of Natural History in
New York City and the
Carnegie Museum of Natural History in
Pittsburgh. Upon coming, he convinced Max Fleischmann, heir to the
Fleischmann Yeast fortune, to build Fleischmann Auditorium as a condition of his employment. Coggeshall was later a key player in the foundation of the California Association of Museums and the Western Museum Association.
From the 1960s to the 80s, the Museum had a large role in the field of
environmental action. Museum scientists helped establish the whale stranding network and participated in the
California Condor Project.
Albert Einstein, who was visiting the
museum with his wife, in
1931, remarked "I can see that this museum has been built by the work of love."
Exhibits
The museum is renowned for fine
dioramas of birds, mammals, and southern California habitats. These were illustrated in the 1930s and 1960s by famous artists of the
California school of
plein-aire painters. The museum is also known for its halls of marine life, geology, and
Chumash Indian life, as well as an
art gallery dedicated to antique
natural history prints. It has collections of over 3 million specimens and an active research program with a focus on
marine biology,
terrestrial vertebrates,
insects,
anthropology, geological mapping, and natural history art.
Exhibits include "Butterflies Alive" and “Bringing the Condors Home” telling the story of the decline and beginning of recovery of the
California Condor.
The museum’s Gladwin Planetarium was renovated in early
2005 and equipped with technology to display distant
planets,
stars, and
galaxies.
The
Ty Warner Sea Center, located on Santa Barbara’s historic
Stearns Wharf, is an off-site facility owned and operated by the
Museum of Natural History. It opened in April of
2005. Among the exhibits of the Sea Center are a
Tide Pool with waves rushing into it every 60 seconds, the
Wet Deck featuring direct access to the water below, the
Channel Theater, the
Workshop, the
Whale Karaoke station, and the plastinated dolphin.
Further Information
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