Letter from the President
Since 1869, the American Museum of Natural History has been dedicated to understanding and sharing the wonders of the world around us.
This institution was founded in an era of rapid industrialization and urbanization, with the mission of advancing deeper knowledge of the natural world and a mandate of excellence. We take up the same charge today, in a similarly fast-paced environment, fueled by extraordinary, accelerating technological transformations and by incredible expertise gained from the past few decades of scientific discovery. The scale and urgency of the greatest challenges we now face—the pressing threats of biodiversity loss and climate change prime among them—are matched only by the scale and urgency of the opportunities we have before us.
Our ability to use our unparalleled scientific collections to identify and address today’s scientific questions is the greatest it has ever been. Since the Museum’s founding, our collections have been the essential materials for research and powerful bridges for engaging the public with tangible scientific evidence of 4.5 billion years of change on our planet, offering opportunities for observation and a remedy against misinformation. Our stewardship of this shared heritage, assembled over generations into 30 million specimens and objects, and activated by centuries of accumulated knowledge, comes on the heels of the genomic revolution, at a time when explosive computational power can be applied to uncover patterns across vast sets of evidence through time and space. Large, longitudinal collections like ours are the foundational libraries for scientific investigations that will help unlock new ways of tackling urgent global problems, including biodiversity loss, climate change, and zoonotic disease.
To advance this effort, we are launching a major project to digitize our collections, extending their reach to activate a global community of researchers and opening access to the broader public for educational and informational use. We also are rededicating ourselves to using our collections, exhibitions, and programming to help visitors, students, and educators understand today’s unprecedented rates of biodiversity loss and climate change. More than 15 years ago, the Museum began raising awareness of the human causes of climate change through a major exhibition that traveled the world. Today, we can use 150 years of gathered evidence in our collections to help identify mitigations and to educate our audiences about the local effects of this global crisis.
Understanding our planet’s past and future fully is not possible without understanding its greatest force for change: humans. That is why human cultures have been an area of study and a topic for exhibitions since the Museum first opened, and also why it is imperative today to update our presentations of the world’s cultures to be accurate, current, and inclusive of living communities’ voices and perspectives. To achieve this model, we are prioritizing close collaboration and co-creation with cultural communities in our exhibitions and programming. Because our work will continue to draw from our collections, it is also vital to acknowledge the painful legacies of how some cultural collections have been misused in the past—most egregiously, to prop up the pseudoscience of eugenics—and work to repair relationships with descendant communities. We are pursuing this by incorporating community consultation as an integral part of our stewardship of all cultural collections, in addition to continuing the critical work of return and repatriation.
The Museum is at its best when it opens opportunities for participation in science to all. Generations of New York City school children have bustled through our halls on field trips, gasping at the towering T. rex or cheering at the vastness of the Milky Way unfolding in the Hayden Planetarium. More recently, elementary school students have energized the new Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation during week-long residencies that turn the Museum into their classroom. Throughout our history the Museum’s outreach has also extended beyond our walls, bringing exhibits and educational programming to neighborhoods and, through our Master of Arts in Teaching program, training science teachers who go on to spark connections from classrooms to collections and scientific research for thousands of students each year. We aim to build on this legacy and to bring the exhilaration of accelerating scientific discovery to an even broader range of communities—both by welcoming all to our campus and by developing new partnerships to reach out to all New Yorkers to share in the delight and discovery of science.
Our plan is ambitious, grounded in our mission, fueled by our commitment to excellence, and powered by a clear vision of a future in which we will continue to set the standard as one of the world’s leading natural history museums. Achieving our goals will require fortifying our infrastructure as well as our financial footing, and embracing innovation to drive the Museum forward.
I invite you to join us in transforming this exciting vision into reality.
Sean Decatur
President