[7] The building and surrounding land that became HMNS at Sugar Land was once part of the Central Unit, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison that had been unoccupied for several decades. Wilson, Wendell E., Joel A. Bartsch, and Mark Mauthner. Wilson, Wendell E., Bartsch, Joel A., Mauthner, Mark. [1] Much of the museum's popularity is attributed to its large number of special or guest exhibits. 
The observatory also houses a portion of the Challenger Learning Center for Space Science Education. Paleoartist, Julius Csotonyi, created fourteen murals based closely on concept drawings by HMNS Curator of Paleontology, Robert Bakker, for the new paleontology hall. (2004). [9][10] The Morian Hall of Paleontology contains more than 60 large skeleton mounts, including three Tyrannosaurus rex and three large Quetzalcoatlus. The initial museum organization was called the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, Inc., and was created in 1909. The center's aim is to teach visitors about space exploration. 
The museum's now wide-ranging education programs began in 1947 and, in its second year, hosted 12,000 children. [2] First housed in Houston's city auditorium, the collection was subsequently housed in the Central Library for seven years, and then at a site in the Houston Zoo in 1929. It is one of the first 8k planetariums in the United States. Csotonyi, Julius, and Steve White. [5], HMNS celebrated its 100th year in 2009. Opened in 1994, the center is housed in a three-story glass building filled with tropical plants and butterflies. The facility is located south of Sugar Land, Texas at Brazos Bend State Park. [17][18], Cockrell Butterfly Center, a butterfly zoo located in museum complex. During that year, the museum offered a multitude of family programs, lectures, free events, and kids' classes as part of the "Fun Hundred" celebration.[6]. This page was last edited on 9 July 2022, at 18:27. The Cockrell Butterfly Center and the Brown Hall of Entomology opened in July 1994. In June 2012, HMNS opened a new 230,000 square foot wing to house its paleontology hall, more than doubling the size of the original museum. Triceratops skeleton at the Houston Museum in a controversial running posture, Burke Baker Planetarium presents a range of science and astronomy shows. The Cockrell Butterfly Center was reopened in May 2007 after being overhauled to make the exhibit more interactive; there are now games for children and a live insect zoo in the Brown Hall of Entomology. Between 1991 and 1994, a number of exhibit halls were renovated and the expansion of the Sterling Hall of Research was completed. HMNS trustees determined that new state-of-the-art facilities, additional space, and renovations to current exhibits were needed because of the increased attendance. The museum is one of the most popular in the United States and ranks just below New York City's American Museum of Natural History and Metropolitan Museum of Art and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in most attendance amongst non-Smithsonian museums. [20], George Observatory, an astronomy observatory equipped with three domed telescopes, including a 36-inch (910mm) Gueymard Research Telescope and a solar telescope. The facility was home to an interactive Dig Pit, where children could excavate a mock Triceratops, a variety of living exhibits, fossils, and minerals. [13], Originally opened in 1969 with a Spitz Space Transit Planetarium,[14] the Planetarium upgraded to an Evans & Sutherland Digistar 1 vector display in 1988, and was the first in the U.S. and third in the world to adopt multiple-projector digital image capability[15] using the Sky-Skan SkyVision system in 1998. [21], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}294318N 952323W / 29.7216N 95.3896W / 29.7216; -95.3896. [3], The museum was officially renamed the Houston Museum of Natural Science in 1960. Quartz crystal from Hot Springs, Arkansas, on display. The museum's primary collection was acquired between 1914 and 1930. Since 2004 its outreach program, "Discovery Dome", takes the planetarium experience on the road, reaching over 40,000 students per year in classrooms and special events in portable digital domes. Museum attendance totals over two million visitors each year. The Wortham IMAX Theatre and the offsite George Observatory were opened in 1989. Museum attendance was more than one million visitors in 1990. Construction of the current facility in Hermann Park began in 1964 and was completed in 1969.[4].
In March 2007, the museum opened the HMNS Woodlands X-ploration Station, located in the Woodlands Mall. In 1988, the Challenger Learning Center was opened in memory of the Space Shuttle Challenger crew members that were lost during the shuttle's tenth mission. The Houston Museum of Natural Science (abbreviated as HMNS) is a natural history museum located on the northern border of Hermann Park in Houston, Texas, United States. Denversaurus and the "Wyrex" Tyrannosaurus specimen exhibited in the Morian Hall of Paleontology. In March 2012, the Wortham IMAX Theatre was converted from 70mm film to 3D digital and renamed the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre.[8]. (2004). (2014). [16] That allowed it to show fulldome movies, many of which were created by HMNS staff. By the 1980s, the museum's permanent displays included a dinosaur exhibit, a space museum, and exhibits on geology, biology, petroleum science, technology, and geography. The Woodlands location closed on September 7, 2009, less than a month before HMNS opened a satellite museum in Sugar Land, Texas. [19], Wortham Giant Screen Theatre, a 394-seat theater presenting various educational films in 4K digital with advanced 3D technology on its 60x80 foot screen. As of 2016, the planetarium is equipped with the Digistar 5 fulldome projection system. The museum complex consists of a central facility with four floors of natural science halls and exhibits, the Burke Baker Planetarium, the Cockrell Butterfly Center, and the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre (formerly known as the Wortham IMAX Theatre). The center exhibits a large range of live butterflies, including the migratory monarchs and their tropical cousins. This included the purchase of a natural-history collection assembled by Henry Philemon Attwater and a donation from collector John Milsaps, the latter of which formed the core of the museum's gem and mineral collection. On October 3, 2009, HMNS opened its satellite museum in Telfair, Sugar Land. "Incredible growth at the Houston Museum of Natural Science", http://www.hmns.org/see_do/hmns_at_one_hundred/the_fun_100.asp?r=1, "Making the Stars: A Brief History of the Burke Baker Planetarium", "CELESTIAL RENOVATION / Revamped planetarium brings space closer to home", "Rice, HMNS pioneer portable, "immersive" planetarium", "Cockrell Butterfly Center | BEYONDbones", Houston Museum of Natural Science at Google Cultural Institute, Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Reflection Pool, Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Houston_Museum_of_Natural_Science&oldid=1097269748, Articles with dead external links from January 2018, Articles with permanently dead external links, Short description is different from Wikidata, Infobox mapframe without OSM relation ID on Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. The museum was established in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, an organization whose goals were to provide a free institution for the people of Houston focusing on education and science.