History
The founding of the IMNH can be traced back to 1934 when a group of dedicated professors and researchers decided to collect, preserve, and display the region's natural and cultural heritage. The Museum was originally established as the Historical Museum at the Southern Branch of the University of Idaho. In the beginning, the Museum’s collection consisted of 5,000 objects that were primarily anthropological, archaeological, and historical artifacts that were donated by the Pocatello Chamber of Commerce, faculty, and supporters of the university's Southern Branch.
The Museum was governed by a 17 member Historic Museum Committee until the mid-1950s when it was renamed the Idaho State College Museum. By 1963, the Idaho State College was renamed Idaho State University and the Museum changed its name to the Idaho State University Museum.
In 1977, the museum shifted its focus toward natural history, the Ray J. Davis Herbarium, and zoological collections. A majority of the collections were transferred from the Idaho State University Department of Biological Sciences to the museum. Also during this time, the Idaho State University Museum acquired historical collections from the Idaho State Historical Society, the Bannock County Historical Society, and the Idaho State University Library.
In May 1977, the Idaho State Board of Education adopted a resolution requesting that Governor John V. Evans designate the Idaho State University Museum as the Idaho Museum of Natural History (IMNH) and signed into law on July 1, 1977. In 1986, the Idaho State Legislature confirmed the IMNH as Idaho’s official state museum of natural history.
Read more about this topic: Idaho Museum Of Natural History
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)