page_title: Staten Island Museum
section_title: Operations at Snug Harbor
hierarchical_section_title: Staten Island Museum / Operations at Snug Harbor
caption_attribution_description: English: The Staten Island Museum on the grounds of Snug Harbor
context_page_description: Staten Island Museum is Staten Island’s oldest cultural institution, and the only remaining general interest museum in New York City.
  Founded in 1881 by fourteen of New York City’s first “environmental activists”, the Staten Island Museum houses artifacts and specimens from ancient to contemporary periods. This “mini-Smithsonian” is rich with arts, natural sciences and local history.
  The museum’s holdings are formally organized into three main collections: Natural Sciences, Fine Art, and History Archives & Library. The natural science collections encompass over 500,000 botanical, biological, anthropological and mineral specimens including bird nests and eggs, mounted animals, fossils, shells, and a significant collection of insects, including important type specimens. Based upon a 19th-century model, the art collection includes works spanning prehistory to the modern period, with representations of diverse world cultures from both the Western and Non-Western traditions. The historical collections include a library, maps and atlases, early films, audio recordings, photographs, historical objects, ephemera and archival documents reaching back to the 17th century.
context_section_description: Staten Island’s "hometown" museum has consolidated its collection to the Staten Island Museum at Snug Harbor. A state of the art LEED certified building opened to the public as of September 2015. In addition, the Museum operates its Art Conservation Studio and the Staten Island History Center & Archives at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, joining other cultural institutions at the site. The museum has transformed from the 19th-century model of a museum as a "cabinet of curiosities", into a fully realized 21st-century institution that is accessible, diverse, technologically advanced, and demonstrates leadership in collections management, exhibitions, education and public programming.
  The new museum, on the Snug Harbor Campus, is the first federal historic landmark on Staten Island designed to achieve LEED Gold certification, including geo-thermal heating and cooling. The mainly city-funded ($23 million) renovation of Building A added over 25,000 square feet (2,300 m²), with additional space to follow in Building B (Bio-Diversity) in 2022.
  The Museum displays 'Staten Island Scene/Seen', a new interpretation of Staten Island across three centuries, including commissioned works by contemporary artists and featuring Hudson River School landscape paintings by Jasper Cropsey and Edward Moran from the museum's collection.
  In addition, a life-size replica of a mastodon greets visitors as they explore the museum, a creature that once roamed the hills of Staten Island as evidenced by local discoveries held in the museum's fossil collection on display in the new lobby.
caption: Building A, Snug Harbor
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