Museum of Northern Arizona, Natural history museum on Fort Valley Road, Flagstaff, United States.
The Museum of Northern Arizona is a natural history museum in Flagstaff that holds collections covering geology, zoology, botany, and anthropology of the Colorado Plateau. Its galleries display fossils, rock specimens, plant life, and objects made by the indigenous peoples of the region, spanning thousands of years.
The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist Harold Colton and artist Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, starting in two rooms at the Flagstaff Woman's Club. Over the following decades it grew steadily, adding research programs and new galleries to become a recognized center for science in the Southwest.
The Ethnology Gallery shows pottery, weaving, and jewelry made by Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, and Pai communities, many of which are still produced today. Walking through this gallery, visitors can see how these groups have shaped their daily lives and surroundings over many generations.
The museum is in an accessible building near central Flagstaff, with galleries arranged so visitors can move through them at their own pace. Allowing at least half a day gives enough time to look at the collections without feeling rushed.
The museum holds the Easton Collection, a group of works on paper that show the Arizona landscape as it looked roughly 90 years ago, before many changes in land use and development. Looking at these images alongside today's landscape makes the passage of time in the region feel very concrete.
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