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 great man knew not that he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What he did, he did because he must; it was the most natural thing in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment. But now, every thing he did, even to the lifting of his finger or the eating of bread, looks large, all-related, and is called an institution.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“No one to slap his head.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 190, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)