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 and/or museum:
“The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“To look at and properly appreciate the British Museum is the work of a lifetime.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)