On June 3rd, six strong men carried a stunning, nearly 400-pound specimen of stibnite crystal into the Harvard Museum of Natural History, where the new specimen is now on display on the third-floor landing. Visitors to the museum are intrigued to see one of the largest stibnite specimens on display anywhere in the world. Named the Swords of China, the crystal was discovered in 2003 in the Wuning Mine of the Jiangxi Province in the southeast of the People’s Republic of China.

The mineral is comprised of antimony and sulfur, and boasts delicate, knife-like crystals. This crystal...

On Saturday, September 20, 2014, Birds of the World will reopen at the Harvard Museum of Natural History after a major renovation. Located around the high balcony encircling the Great Mammal Hall, the new gallery captures the stunning diversity of birds, with hundreds of bird specimens on display representing over 200 different bird families from around the world. New displays reveal the very latest in surprising scientific discoveries about the evolution of birds, which scientists now know to be modern dinosaurs. This exhibition is the culmination of months of cleaning and refurbishing...

Cambridge, MA—Today, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded $150,000 to the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture (HMSC). The museums will use the grant funds to create an innovative learning experience entitled What’s in a Name? Species, Naming and the Scientific Process to educate and engage the public in the scientific process of systematics, species identification and naming. The project is a partnership between HMSC, the Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org), and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (biodiversitylibrary.org) as represented by the Ernst Mayr Library...

On April 30, the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture and the Harvard Art Museums will launch a new annual program including seminars and a public lecture focused on innovative curatorial practice. The collaboration will showcase internationally renowned curators who are breaking new ground in the organization of exhibits.

The inaugural public lecture features Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, who served as artistic director of the critically acclaimed contemporary art exhibition dOCUMENTA (13), held in Kassel, Germany, in 2012. The exhibition, which drew nearly a million visitors,...

Sea Creatures in Glass to open May 24 at the Harvard Museum of Natural History Exhibit of Harvard's Blaschka glass animals includes models off display for decades. Many years before they were commissioned by Harvard University to make the “Glass Flowers,” father and son artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka meticulously shaped glass and sometimes wire into lifelike models of marine animals.

Renowned for their beauty and exacting detail, the Blaschka invertebrate models were commissioned by universities and museums throughout the ...

In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s The Maine Woods, the Harvard Museum of Natural History offers an exhibition of finely crafted photographic prints by photographer Scot Miller, who has traversed the state of Maine for years, retracing the footsteps of New England’s native son, Henry David Thoreau. Opening Saturday, November 16, 2013, Thoreau’s Maine Woods: A Journey in Photographs with Scot Miller, will feature stunning...

Celebrate the longest day of the year with live music, ice cream, hands-on activities, and free admission to all four of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture—the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Semitic Museum, and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Join in outdoor festivities on the new Harvard Plaza, located between the Harvard Science Center and Sanders Theatre/Memorial Hall at One Oxford Street in Cambridge: 

Watch and dance with the Red Herring...

On Saturday, April 6, the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s former Mineral gallery will reopen with new exhibits which will address key geological themes including: plate tectonics, geologic time, rock types and formation, and planetary geology.

The newly renovated Earth & Planetary Sciences gallery will feature a spectacular array of stunning minerals and intriguing rocks from the collections of Harvard’s Mineralogical and Geological Museum, some of which will be on public display for the very first time. Visitors will come face-to-face with rock and mineral specimens that...

Time Trails Gallery Exploration Opening March 6 through December 6, 2013

Explore the concept of time in unexpected places at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and at the three other Harvard Museums of Science and Culture (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Semitic Museum, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments). It’s all part of a new exhibition Time and Time Again: How Science and Culture Shape the Past, Present, and Future, opening...

Hear the Sounds of Nature in New England Forests Exhibition at Harvard Museum of Natural History’s Zofnass Family Gallery. Where can you get to by T during the dreary winter, where you can hear the calls of meadowlarks, the croak of a frog, or the slap of a beaver’s tale on a pond? Plan a visit to the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge where you can listen to dozens of natural sounds newly added to the New England Forests exhibition in the Zofnass Family Gallery. With motion detectors and different sound tracks concealed...

Jane Pickering has been appointed executive director of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture (HMSC), a new consortium of Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) museums at Harvard University which includes the Harvard Museum of Natural History. The other partner museums are the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Semitic Museum, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

The HMSC was established on a model pioneered since 1998 by the Harvard Museum of Natural History—which serves as the public face for its partner...

Cockroaches Mini-Exhibit opens September 29, 2012 at Harvard Museum of Natural History

A group of adaptable arthropods are among the oldest land-living animals on Earth. They thrived in lush coal forests 300 million years ago, survived multiple mass extinctions, and today represent 4,500 species, including some of the most beautiful and colorful insects on the planet. Nurturing parents, these insects often carry and protect their young, and some species even feed them with a kind of “milk” made from their own bodies. Who are they? The answer may surprise you....

Effective September 1, 2012, the admission price at the Harvard Museum of Natural History will increase. The new admission rates are: adults, $12; seniors (65 and over) and college students, $10; and youth (3-18 years old), $8. Admission is free for children under 3 years of age and Harvard University photo ID holders. Prices at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology also increase, and a ticket to either museum admits visitors to both.

Museum admission rates were last increased in July 2006.

About the Harvard Museum...

The historic Fishes Exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge reopens to the public on June 2, 2012 after a major makeover.  Museum-goers may explore the diversity of fishes from gars to groupers and stonefishes to seahorses. The exhibition will redisplay some long-time visitor favorites including the hammerhead and mako sharks, the massive bluefin tuna, and the prickly porcupine fish, and will also add many new specimens borrowed from the ichthyology collections of Harvard's Museum of...

Opening Saturday, February 18, 2012, Mollusks: Shelled Masters of the Marine Realm will explore the amazing diversity and history of mollusks—snails, clams, squid and other invertebrates--that comprise almost a quarter of all known marine species. Visitors will see hundreds of shells from the collections in the Department of Malacology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, many of which have never before been on public...

Ghost Orchids by Glass Artist Siobhan Healy Closing March 4 at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

Ghost Orchids, a glass sculpture by Scottish glass artist Siobhan Healy, which is currently on display in the Glass Flowers gallery at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, can be seen through March 4, 2012. The inspiration for the artist's subtle and thought-provoking piece is the ghost orchid (Epipogium aphyllum), a rare British wild flower recently rediscovered after it was thought to be extinct for 23 years. Healy depicts the...

It has been a closely kept secret, but early, early morning some months ago, before sunrise, and before the cleaning staff arrived, the popular JEOPARDY quiz show’s Video Clue Crew secretly arrived on campus to shoot a full segment of clues in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. 

Shooting the clues took several hours, so that students arriving at opening hours from Cambridge Rindge and Latin and Butler Elementary School in Belmont that morning saw the Jeopardy crew, and those students who recognized clue crew stars Jimmy McGuire and Sarah Whitcomb were asked to keep the...

Wednesday, December 21, extended hours 5:00-8:00 pm, Revels' Headgear Gallery performances, 6:00 pm

Celebrate the winter solstice during extended hours on December 21 from 5:00 to 8:00 pm at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Explore human's fascination with the symbolic power of antlers during Winter Solstice Night at the Museum. In collaboration with The Christmas Revels, the Pinewoods Morris Men will perform the traditional Abbots Bromley Horn Dance in the museum's Headgear: The Natural History of Horns and Antlers gallery at 6:00 pm. The horn dance is the oldest known...

Harvard Museum of Natural History announces two new photographic exhibits, opening in the museum lobby on October 12, showcasing the research of Harvard scholars. On one side of the lobby is Life in the Extreme Deep, a collection of stunning deep-sea photographs by scientists who work in the field with Harvard's Loeb Associate Professor of Natural Sciences Peter R. Girguis. On the lobby’s other wall are photographs by renowned zoologist and photographer Piotr Naskrecki, from his new book, Relics: Travels in Nature’s Time Machine. The...

This past Monday morning, the giraffe and okapi were safely back behind glass after spending a couple weeks released from ‘captivity’ in the museum’s Great Mammal Hall for the first time in nearly a century. It took a half dozen staff from HMNH and the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), which owns the specimens, to gently lift the giraffe back into its case.

For the past few weeks, two artists and sculptors from the Chase Studio in Missouri have been working in the galleries along with renowned exhibition fabricator, Dr. Terry Chase, to repair some of the museum’s most beloved...