Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture - Collections

Collections

The museum houses more than 12 million artifacts and specimens in its anthropology, biology, and geology research divisions. Highlights include:

The museum states that its collection of Northwest Coast ethnographic material is the fifth largest in the world, including some 10,000 objects, among which are "the important early Swan, Eells, Emmons, and Waters collections, as well as the unmatched Blackman-Hall and Ottenberg contemporary silkscreen print collections, and the Steinman contemporary Northwest Coast sculpture collection." The muse's Northwest Coast image research database includes "the Holm/Wright collection of images of Northwest Coast art from 200 museums and private collections (25,000 images), the Harris collection of Northwest Coast silver jewelry images (6,000 images), and de Menil photographs of Northwest Coast totem poles (1,000 images), as well as the George MacDonald Archive of historical Northwest Coast photographs."

The museum's Alaskan Arctic collection includes 6,500 pieces, including "basketry, kayaks, tools, and contemporary carvings," while the collection for Western Sub-arctic, Plateau, Plains, Great Lakes, and Southwest cultures includes "baskets, beadwork, parfleches, weavings, and pottery." The museum's Pacific Rim collections has almost 15,000 items from Asia and the Pacific, among which are "kava bowls, porcelain, dance masks, and samurai armor."

• The world's largest collection of spread bird wings (a technique that Burke pioneered)
• The world's second largest collection of frozen bird tissues for genetic research
• The fourth largest ichthyology collection this side of the Mississippi
• The fifth largest collection of Native American Art in the United States
• One of the largest collections of Northwest plants and fungi
• Over one million archaeological artifacts, including extensive collections from Washington state sites around Puget Sound and the Columbia River
• First naturalist museum west of the Mississippi River