Museum Overview
Welcome to the Florida Museum of Natural History, chartered by the Florida Legislature in 1917 as the state's official natural history museum. With more than 20 million specimens of amphibians, birds, butterflies, fish, mammals, mollusks, reptiles, vertebrate and invertebrate fossils, recent and fossil plants and associated databases and libraries, the Florida Museum is the largest natural history museum in the Southeast. The museum occupies three principal facilities on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville.
Dickinson Hall
Dickinson Hall, home to the museum since the early 1970s, houses most of the collections and research activities. The University of Florida Herbarium is also located here. Today, Dickinson Hall is visited primarily by scientists and university students engaged in collections-based natural history research involving our extensive neontological, paleontological, and anthropological/archaeological holdings.
Powell Hall
Powell Hall is the museum's main Education and Exhibition Center. Open to the public since January 1998, this facility houses exhibits and public education programs. It is located between the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art and the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in the UF Cultural Plaza at S.W. 34th Street and Hull Road on the western edge of campus.
Visitors to Powell Hall will encounter exciting temporary exhibits and signature permanent exhibition halls that explore the state's unique habitats and rich cultural history.
McGuire Hall
McGuire Hall is the museum's newest addition, a 35,000 sq. ft. facility housing the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, a center devoted to collections-based research, public education and a living butterfly vivarium. The collections, including those once located in the Allyn Museum of Entomology in Sarasota, total over two million specimens. The Lepidoptera research facilities are among the finest in the world. Visitors can explore the "Wall of Wings", which reaches nearly three stories high and 200 feet long, containing thousands of images and actual Lepidoptera specimens, information panels, videos and maps. The Center also features a 6,400-square-foot Butterfly Rainforest exhibit, a screened enclosure of lush subtropical and tropical trees and plants that supports hundreds of living butterflies and moths from all corners of the globe with waterfalls and a walking trail.
Randell Research Center
The museum also manages the 56-acre Randell Research Center, an internationally significant archaeological site on Pine Island near Ft. Myers.
The Florida Museum of Natural History staff includes about 100 full-time and 120 part-time staff members and about 150 volunteers. The annual operating budget of ca. $18 million includes state and federal funding and gifts of private support. The museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums and is an institutional member of the Association of Science-Technology Centers, the Natural Science Collections Alliance, the Florida Association of Museums and the Southeastern Museums Conference.