The Bell Museum, formerly known as the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History, is located at the University of Minnesota's Saint Paul campus. The museum's current location on the Saint Paul campus opened in 2018.
- Venue
- Bell Museum of Natural History
- Town
- Minneapolis, US
The Bell Museum, formerly known as the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History, is located at the University of Minnesota's Saint Paul campus. The museum's current location on the Saint Paul campus opened in 2018. The Minnesota wildlife dioramas focus on animal specimens native to the state. The museum also houses the digital Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium. The museum is part of the university's College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. The museum's former location on University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus closed in January 2017. The museum was established by a state legislative mandate in 1872 to collect, preserve, prepare, display, and interpret Minnesota's diverse animal and plant life for scholarly research, teaching, public appreciation, enrichment, and enjoyment. Its governance belongs, by state legislative designation, to the University of Minnesota. The museum was first located in a single room in a building on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus. The museum was reorganized by physician and ornithologist Thomas Sadler Roberts with the help of his friend James Ford Bell, who covered half the cost ($150,000) for a new building to house nature dioramas. Bell wanted the university to add a diorama of gray wolves in their natural environment, in order promote their conservation, since the state paid hunters a bounty for killing wolves in the 1930s. The remaining funds were raised through donations and federal government funding, and the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History opened in 1940 at University Avenue and Church Street. The building was expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, but by the 1980s the building was suffering from leaks, cracks, mold and water damage, which threatened the collections and the dioramas. After decade-long planning and legislative process, the Minnesota Legislative session passed a bonding bill in funding for the new facility in 2014. The agreement allowed the university to borrow $5