As China’s earliest-built museum of natural science, Tianjin Natural History Museum has been adhering to the principle of public welfare in the past years and has been making full advantage of collections and personnel in the museum to wage diversified science education activities for mass young people. Since its opening to the public 10 years ago, it has received more than 2 million visitors and become a popular science educational base for patriotism education, which combines the functions of collection, research, outreach education and tourism.
Tianjin Natural History Museum is one of a few Chinese comprehensive museums that have a bearing on subjects such as animal, plant, paleontology, geology and others. The number of collections in the museum reaches 400 thousand, among which there are 1,300 master pieces of first- and second-grade as well as more than 1,400 pieces of specimens. It mainly collects natural sciences specimens in Northwest and North China as well as representative and typical natural sciences specimens both for home and abroad.
The predecessor of the almost 100-year-old Tianjin Natural History Museum is the Northern Museum, which was founded in 1914 and renamed as Tianjin Natural History Museum in 1957. In 1997, the Tianjin Municipal Government invested and renovated the Natural History Museum and re-opened it to public in 1998.
The new museum occupies an area 20,000 square meters, with a construction space of 12,000 square meters. It consists of four functional areas: galleries, library collections, business premises, the Botanical Garden. The main building with the shape of “seashells with beads” coveys the implicating message that Tianjin Natural History Museum is a pearl on the coast of the Bohai Sea.
As a mass science educational base and an important platform for boosting spiritual civilization, Tianjin Natural History Museum adheres to the principle of public welfare and opens the basic display to the public all year round.
Tianjin Natural History Museum organizes a group of full-time and part-time work staff who has professional knowledge on explanation, reception and counseling, as well as more than 100 volunteers ranging from primary school students to 80-year-old senior people. They have done a tremendous work on collecting, explanation and other services in the past years.
Built and opened for public in 2004, Tianjin “Ocean World” fills up the gap of large aquarium in Tianjin. The education of “Ocean and Environment” held in Tianjin Natural History Museum, was warmly received by mass visitors.
The Museum operated in a flexible way to promote advanced civilization, to let the museum better known by the community and to boost the penetration of scientific knowledge. During the last five years, the roving exhibition had attracted an audience of more than 2 million, and toured more than 100 exhibition venues all around China. In 2005, “The exhibition supermarket” program won the first prize of outstanding mass science activities in Tianjin.
As one of first-batch national-level museums, the Tianjin Natural History Museum has been remaining active in research activities. During the recent 10 years, it has assumed a number of national, provincial and ministerial-level scientific research projects. Papers on the fossils of Microraptor gui and New Species of D.paradoxus were published in the English magazine NATURE. The museum edited and published Flora of Tianjin to fill up the gap of flora monograph in Tianjin. In addition, it published General Knowledge of Tianjin · Birds to fill the blank of birds monograph in Tianjin.
