Milwaukee Public Museum - Research and Collections

Research and Collections

Research and collections at the Milwaukee Public Museum include:

• the Anthropology Department, which contains approximately 120,000 artifacts.
• the Botany Department includes a greenhouse on the museum roof. A herbarium collection of over 5,000 specimens was started by the German-English Academy in 1852. It was transferred in 1857 to the Wisconsin Natural History Society and then to the museum in 1883.
• the Conservation Department.
• the Geology Department has a large variety of minerals and fossils, along with a research staff.
• Historical and cultural artifacts including the Dietz typewriter, Dietz bicycle, and Nunnemacher arms collections.
• Invertebrate zoology.
• a Photograph Collection including 6,000 images from the Sumner W. Matteson Collection, 8,000 from the Brandon DeCou collection, and photographs of Wisconsin Indians taken by museum staff.
• a Reference Library containing over 100,000 volumes of natural history interest.
• the Registration Department to inventory museum collections.
• Vertebrate zoology.
• a 14,500-year-old woolly mammoth skeleton donated to the museum. The real bones are too fragile and are preserved for research, but a fiberglass replica set is on display at the museum.