Cetacean remains at the Burke Museum.
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture has been a respected institution since its founding in 1885, and lays claim to being the oldest public museum in the state of Washington. Since 1962, it has been housed in a nondescript facility on the University of Washington campus that has since become inadequate to house and maintain its collection. For the last ten years, local design firm Olson Kundig has been working on a replacement modern facility. Construction on the new museum has now been completed, with a grand opening expected to occur in Fall of 2019.
The new facility has many advantages over its predecessor both in terms of accessibility and preservation. The new design features a more open floor plan, with transparent windows that allow visitors to see the science going on behind the scenes. Advanced skylights will allow natural light to come in, but keep harmful artifact-destroying radiation out. The wood-paneled exterior is meant to evoke the Pacific Northwest landscape. Additionally, over 29 indigenous tribes were consulted in the presentation and transportation of the museum’s extensive collection of cultural artifacts.
Perhaps one of the most important research features of the new building is having room to safely store equipment that was previously housed all over campus. This is particularly key when that equipment includes a supply of flesh-eating beetles used for cleaning bones!
Now what remains is moving the museum’s extensive collection of approximately 16 million fossils, specimens and cultural objects to their new home. And time is of the essence: the old museum is expected to be demolished in early 2019.
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