With a heritage dating back over 300 years, the Natural History Museum of Basel (German: Naturhistorisches Museum Basel) in Basel, Switzerland, houses wide-ranging collections primarily focused on the fields of zoology, entomology, mineralogy, anthropology, osteology and paleontology. Its mission is to expand, conserve, explore, document and communicate the over 7.7 million objects in its holdings, which are conceived as an “Archive of Life”. It regularly presents special exhibitions on current topics, offers special events, guided tours and excursions and contributes to various national and international research projects.
The museum is a heritage site of national significance.
Famous quotes containing the words natural history, natural, history and/or museum:
“To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. Teach him something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning round.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their state and natural end.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Soaked by the sparkling waters of America.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2740, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)