Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich, Ethnographic museum in downtown Zurich, Switzerland.

The Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich is a museum in downtown Zurich that occupies a historic building and displays collections from diverse world cultures. The exhibition spaces show objects from Africa, the Himalayan regions, China, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Americas.

The museum was founded in 1889 and joined the University of Zurich in 1914, moving into its current building from 1864 in the old Botanical Garden. Since then, it has been gathering and preserving collections that document how people have lived in different parts of the world.

The museum's name traces to the Zurich Ethnographic Collection, first shown to the public in 1889 and run by the Geographic-Ethnographic Society of Zurich until the university took it over in 1914. Objects come from West and Central Africa, Ethiopia, the Himalayas, Tibet, India, Indonesia, Melanesia, Australia, Amazonia, the Andes and the Great Plains. Temporary exhibitions change three to four times a year.

The museum sits on the grounds of the Old Botanical Garden "zur Katz" in Kreis 1, a short walk from the university's main building. The complex holds three exhibition halls totalling roughly 700 m2, plus a lecture hall used for public events. The library has a reading room with 20 workstations, and most of its 35,000 books can be borrowed.

The museum holds around 40,000 historical photographs, a film and video archive of some 2,400 titles, and a sound archive that absorbed most of the former Music-Ethnological Archive of the University of Zurich. Its library, with roughly 35,000 books, has a reading room of 20 workstations where rare books and non-circulation videos can be consulted.