Collin Bristol
The Arizona Museum of Natural History was founded as a small museum in Mesa City Hall in 1977 with a small collection of Arizona artifacts, in a building designed by Lescher & Mahoney and built in 1937 with WPA funds, that originally housed Mesa City Hall, municipal courts, city library, police and fire departments. There were expansions to the building in 1983 and 1987, and in 2000 a new wing was added.
The main museum complex is currently about 74,000 square feet, of which about 46,000 square feet are dedicated to exhibitions containing a collection of about 60,000 objects of natural history, anthropology, history & art, with approximately 10,000 historic photographs. A research facility was also added in 1995. Additionally, the Arizona Museum of Natural History has prominent research curators in the fields of paleontology and archeology/anthropology. Recent annual attendance is about 139,998.
The Museum’s exhibitions include a three-story indoor waterfall on Dinosaur Mountain, Dinosaur Hall, a real territorial jail, and a recreation of the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine. The Southwest Gallery consists of a native peoples’ gallery, with exhibits about Paleoindian big game hunters and gatherers, the first inhabitants of North America, and the Desert Cultures that developed later. It also holds a recreation of a Hohokam village, with pithouses and above-ground structures, outfitted with real artifacts as they might have been from about A.D. 600-1450. Another exhibit is the Ancient Cultures of Mexico. The Origins gallery is designed as a voyage through the timeline of the cosmos and discusses major events in the history of planet Earth.
Three changing exhibition galleries offer a variety of subjects. The evolution of flight—was it from the ground up or from the tree down? The museum’s exhibition, “Rulers of the Prehistoric Skies,” helped to answer that question. The exhibit has since been removed, but the pterosaurs are still visible throughout the museum. At no other time in the history of life on Earth were there animals like the pterosaurs, those flying creatures who truly did rule the sky. At the museum, there were lots of kids and parents rather than the usual elderly crowd.
There are activities throughout the museum catered to a younger audience. I spoke with a museum curator about what they are doing to attract the millennial crowd. She said, “we are constantly trying to figure out what to change to bring in that crowd.” We have a couple of events throughout the year with free food and lowered admission which seems to help but it’s not enough yet.” I got the impression that so far not a lot has worked but the fact that they are consistently trying to figure out ways is definitely better than not.
Museum Showcase 