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Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is the officially designated natural history museum for the State of Oklahoma, located on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. The museum was founded in 1899 by an act of the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature. Its current building was completed in 1999 under the leadership of Michael A. Mares, who was director from 1983-2003 and from 2008-2018. The museum contains more than 10 million objects and specimens in 12 collections. The current building is a 198,000-square-foot facility with almost 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2) of public space, with five permanent and two temporary galleries and exhibits that provide an in-depth tour of Oklahoma's natural and cultural history. The remainder of the facility is dedicated to housing museum collections, laboratories, libraries, and offices. It is one of the world's largest university-based natural history museums.
Before its 1999 relocation and expansion, the original museum chartered by the Oklahoma legislature in 1899 had occupied much smaller quarters in various buildings on campus. It was originally named as the Department of Geology and Natural History, renamed the Museum of the University of Oklahoma in 1943, and in 1953 named the Stovall Museum of Science and History, for J. Willis Stovall, a paleontologist and faculty professor who was director from 1943 to 1953.
The Sam Noble Museum has received a number of national and international awards, including the national award for Collection Stewardship and Heritage Preservation in 2004; the National Medal for Museums from the Institute of Museums and Library Services in 2014, the highest award from the U.S. government for a museum for being an institution that makes a difference for individuals, families, and communities, presented at the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama; the Best in Heritage International Projects of Influence Award from the European Heritage Association presented in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2015; and the University Museums and Collections Award from the International Council of Museums presented in Helsinki, Finland, in 2017 in recognition of the museum’s Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair program.
Nearly 10 years after the founding of the University of Oklahoma in 1890, the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature became interested in establishing a museum at what was then the Territorial University. In 1899 the legislature passed a law (Chapter XVI) establishing the position of a territorial geologist and further addressed the collections that would be amassed from the geologist’s ongoing work. The law also established that a Department of Geology and Natural History would begin a scientific survey of the Territory of Oklahoma, and mandated the discovery and development of natural resources, including flora, fauna, and minerals.
As the university’s collections grew during the early 20th century, several attempts were made to build a museum facility to house new collections, exhibit materials and specimens. The attempts were nearly successful in 1920 when university leadership funded an expedition to Alaska for the collection of North American megafauna specimens (grizzly bears, caribou, mountain goats, etc.). It was hoped that these specimens would excite Oklahomans and their legislators to provide funds for a new museum facility. Although those specimens are still preserved and studied even to this day, a museum funding bill was ultimately vetoed at the time by the governor.
Museum collections continued to grow without a dedicated facility throughout the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. At the time, President Franklin Roosevelt and his Works Progress Administration (WPA) sought to ease mass unemployment during the Great Depression through federal jobs and careers. It was through this program that about 50 workers were assigned to museum paleontologist J. Willis Stovall, Ph.D. The workers were employed to strategically uncover and excavate dinosaur fossils across the state of Oklahoma. Discovering a number of large, unique specimens of dinosaurs and mammals, the museum’s vertebrate fossil collection quickly grew in prominence, while also demanding additional storage space.
At the same time, university archaeologists supervised excavations throughout eastern Oklahoma with large teams of laborers supported by the WPA. Most notable were excavations at Spiro Mounds, an important center occupied primarily from AD 1000-1400. This intervention was initially oriented towards salvaging Craig Mound, which had been subjected to extensive looting in the mid-1930s. These WPA excavations deepened the understanding of Native American pre-contact history in Oklahoma and yielded cultural material that formed the basis of the museum’s early archaeology collection.
J. Willis Stovall ultimately developed a plan to bring all of the university’s extensive collections together under a single museum umbrella. In the late 1930s, Stovall was named as the director of this early museum, which was largely scattered among numerous university colleges and departments. While Stovall made repeated attempts to obtain funding for a dedicated museum facility, he was unable to do so before his death in 1953. Though the museum collections remained scattered physically, Stovall’s work was instrumental in uniting the collections under a single administrative unit and securing limited storage space for a number of objects and specimens.
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Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is the officially designated natural history museum for the State of Oklahoma, located on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. The museum was founded in 1899 by an act of the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature. Its current building was completed in 1999 under the leadership of Michael A. Mares, who was director from 1983-2003 and from 2008-2018. The museum contains more than 10 million objects and specimens in 12 collections. The current building is a 198,000-square-foot facility with almost 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2) of public space, with five permanent and two temporary galleries and exhibits that provide an in-depth tour of Oklahoma's natural and cultural history. The remainder of the facility is dedicated to housing museum collections, laboratories, libraries, and offices. It is one of the world's largest university-based natural history museums.
Before its 1999 relocation and expansion, the original museum chartered by the Oklahoma legislature in 1899 had occupied much smaller quarters in various buildings on campus. It was originally named as the Department of Geology and Natural History, renamed the Museum of the University of Oklahoma in 1943, and in 1953 named the Stovall Museum of Science and History, for J. Willis Stovall, a paleontologist and faculty professor who was director from 1943 to 1953.
The Sam Noble Museum has received a number of national and international awards, including the national award for Collection Stewardship and Heritage Preservation in 2004; the National Medal for Museums from the Institute of Museums and Library Services in 2014, the highest award from the U.S. government for a museum for being an institution that makes a difference for individuals, families, and communities, presented at the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama; the Best in Heritage International Projects of Influence Award from the European Heritage Association presented in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2015; and the University Museums and Collections Award from the International Council of Museums presented in Helsinki, Finland, in 2017 in recognition of the museum’s Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair program.
Nearly 10 years after the founding of the University of Oklahoma in 1890, the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature became interested in establishing a museum at what was then the Territorial University. In 1899 the legislature passed a law (Chapter XVI) establishing the position of a territorial geologist and further addressed the collections that would be amassed from the geologist’s ongoing work. The law also established that a Department of Geology and Natural History would begin a scientific survey of the Territory of Oklahoma, and mandated the discovery and development of natural resources, including flora, fauna, and minerals.
As the university’s collections grew during the early 20th century, several attempts were made to build a museum facility to house new collections, exhibit materials and specimens. The attempts were nearly successful in 1920 when university leadership funded an expedition to Alaska for the collection of North American megafauna specimens (grizzly bears, caribou, mountain goats, etc.). It was hoped that these specimens would excite Oklahomans and their legislators to provide funds for a new museum facility. Although those specimens are still preserved and studied even to this day, a museum funding bill was ultimately vetoed at the time by the governor.
Museum collections continued to grow without a dedicated facility throughout the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. At the time, President Franklin Roosevelt and his Works Progress Administration (WPA) sought to ease mass unemployment during the Great Depression through federal jobs and careers. It was through this program that about 50 workers were assigned to museum paleontologist J. Willis Stovall, Ph.D. The workers were employed to strategically uncover and excavate dinosaur fossils across the state of Oklahoma. Discovering a number of large, unique specimens of dinosaurs and mammals, the museum’s vertebrate fossil collection quickly grew in prominence, while also demanding additional storage space.
At the same time, university archaeologists supervised excavations throughout eastern Oklahoma with large teams of laborers supported by the WPA. Most notable were excavations at Spiro Mounds, an important center occupied primarily from AD 1000-1400. This intervention was initially oriented towards salvaging Craig Mound, which had been subjected to extensive looting in the mid-1930s. These WPA excavations deepened the understanding of Native American pre-contact history in Oklahoma and yielded cultural material that formed the basis of the museum’s early archaeology collection.
J. Willis Stovall ultimately developed a plan to bring all of the university’s extensive collections together under a single museum umbrella. In the late 1930s, Stovall was named as the director of this early museum, which was largely scattered among numerous university colleges and departments. While Stovall made repeated attempts to obtain funding for a dedicated museum facility, he was unable to do so before his death in 1953. Though the museum collections remained scattered physically, Stovall’s work was instrumental in uniting the collections under a single administrative unit and securing limited storage space for a number of objects and specimens.