Museum of Natural History of Mexico City
Renovation and Restoration Project
by Marco Barrera Bassols

Español/Spanish

MEXICO CITY -- The Museum of Natural History of Mexico City (MNH) is one of Mexico's most important and oldest cultural institutions. This historic, non-profit institution is widely acclaimed throughout the Americas for its scientific investigation and research techniques. The MNH is a vibrant, interactive, and dynamic space that incites curiosity and fosters exploration and learning for visitors of all ages. It exists to stimulate, investigate, promote, document, and support activities that enhance awareness and understanding about Mexico's biodiversity and cultural pluralism, reinforce sustainable development, and promote respect and protection of our environment.

The MNH highlights and explores global and local themes relevant to natural history. The MNH exists as a museum of synthesis, encounters, knowledge-building, and innovation. Through a multidisciplinary approach, we incite visitors to experience a personal process of discovery through a variety of investigative, technological and curatorial techniques, and encourages them to become familiar with their past, understand their present and transform the future.

The MNH was inaugurated more than three decades ago in 1964. At that time, it was one of the first museums in the world to promote the groundbreaking curatorial approach of incorporating contemporary scientific theories, such as the origins of life, into its exhibitions. The Museum's legacy does not begin in 1964, however. Its origin dates back to 1790, as one of the Americas' first institutions of curatorial research in the field of natural history. The Museum has seven thousand square meters of exhibition areas which makes it the largest of its kind in Mexico. It is currently suffering the consequences of the passage of time, not only because of the deterioration of the building and objects within it but also due to its ideas. For this reason, the Museum is in the process of renovating its installations and exhibits. The radical change in the scientific vision of nature, due in great measure to the environmental crisis that the planet is experiencing, warrants a substantial transformation in the MNH. This renewal impacts the Museum's contents as well as the ways in which they are presented.

In view of the above, we consider that our five million dollar renovation project must respond to the new paradigms of museology and scientific knowledge. Our programs will offer different points of view surrounding each issue in order to nurture curiosity more than certainty and the process of acquiring knowledge rather than the actual knowledge itself. The interaction of the different areas that comprise the institution (management, curatorial and exhibition design, investigation and research, audience development and educational services, administration, etc.) has to be achieved in such a way that the visitor, when participating in any activity, perceives the interaction as a whole.

The MNH's programs and exhibits will be integrated and restructured to counter mechanistic and reductionistic views common to museums of this nature until recently. We will try to demonstrate the complexities of the processes that occur in nature by presenting various models, including randomness, lately developed by the chaos theory. During the fall of 1999, the Museum of Natural History of Mexico City will become permanently affiliated with the Ministry of the Environment of the Federal District Government. This relationship will allow us to participate proactively in the Government's environmental education initiatives and coordinate specific actions with Federal branches such as SEP (Education), SEMARNAP (Environment) and CNCA (Culture). For the past 35 years, the Museum has been affiliated with and administered by Socicultur, Mexico City's Commission on Arts and Culture.

Restructuring the Museum's actual contents to include studies that have been conducted in the past few years concerning our planet's biological diversity, is a fundamental aspect of our renovation program. It has been established that the greatest biological diversity of the planet falls within the zone demarcated by the tropics. Mexico, due to its location within this zone, is one of the countries with the most significant biological diversity in the world. Our curatorial perspective will emphasize a "planetary conscience" that encourages visitors to understand that whatever happens in any part of the world has repercussions at a local and global level. In this way, we link economic, social and cultural issues to scientific and environmental ones.

The MNH will emphasize six global themes:

1) Caminos de Luz: Solar system, Galactic Astronomy and Extragalactic Astronomy. Origin and evolution of the universe. Instrumentation and Advanced Technology Telescopes. The Room of the Moon. Myths, Legends, Hypotheses and Theories of the Universe.

2) Human beings and their environment: the genesis and trajectory of life and the process through which human beings adapt to their environment and settle throughout diverse continents;

3) Evolution of life: explosion of life forms and species, and the appearance of new species;

4) Mexico's biodiversity: its geological history, biomes and the transformation of landscapes from past to present;

5) Natural history of the cradle of Mexico City: the composition and the transformation (past to present) of its surrounding mountain ranges, plains, valleys, rivers, lakes, and other tributaries; and

6) "Think locally, act globally": global problems and local contexts, successful sustainable experiences and interdependent environmental, social, cultural, and economic structures.

To restore and renovate the Museum, we will implement the concepts of Functional Architecture. These concepts stem from creating and implementing an organic exhibition design which is flexible and not rigid; modular and not linear. This design maximizes the use of the existing spaces and financial resources to resolve the detected deficiencies and create user-friendly exhibitions and an interactive, participatory experience for the Museum visitor. This process implies a redistribution and re-zoning based on a new script for the Museum; one that includes an axis, networks and nodules (systems) that creates new sensory paths of renovated and permanent ties with the public. At the same time, we will maintain those exhibits which show how humans, from past to present, have perceived nature and the history of nature. In other terms, we strive to create a multifaceted space that will increase the individual and collective quality of life and human values by stimulating our visitors' creativity, communication and participation.

These concepts will be useful in designing the exhibitions due to the fact that they express the idea that to be integrated, the exhibits and installations have to be created and organized as a structural and semantic SYSTEM. To become organic, the structure has to be NODAL, that is, created as a NETWORK, the way nature and human beings are organized and relate to one another not only in the known sequential and cyclic chains but also in systems and processes that are extremely complex.

The MNH will adapt the use of existing spaces according to institutional priorities and a work calendar that divides the renovation and restoration into phases. Our first priority will be the exhibition spaces, the spaces necessary for the services to the public (children's areas, auditorium, cafeteria, media library, audiovisual projection rooms, etc). and a new entrance to the Museum.

The Museum strives to increase our existing collections with materials and examples from Mexico to illustrate the intrinsic relationship that exists among living things, including man. The MNH will also be a space in movement by ensuring that visits made by the public become a significant experience; sensitive, cognitive, inquisitive, and provocative. In this fashion, the visitor will be a participating as an actor in his or her surroundings. Through an interactive curatorial premise, the Museum will provoke a sense of discovery and search inside and outside of its walls for each visitor, as well as raise their consciousness that local actions have global consequences on our environment. For this reason, the Museum is developing environmental education programs that include, among others, local schools and residents of Mexico City, as well as programs, which monitor Mexico City's flora and fauna. The Museum, in partnership with the Government of Mexico City, will publish a series of guides called "Naturaleza" (Nature) which will classify and explain the diverse birds and butterflies that exist in Mexico City. These guides are the cornerstones of a permanent collection of local and national biodiversity.

To enhance our mission, special programs of recreational, educational and multidisciplinary nature will be established. For teachers, for example, there will be syllabi with information and activities related to the temporary exhibitions as well as seminars and workshops that they will be able to teach in the classroom. For the general public, we will offer conferences, film series, master classes, workshops, discovery routes, music, theater and dance performances, seminars, and environmental education activities, among others. These activities will reinforce the visit to nurture the short and long term creation of an "actor-public," who are promoters of change in the relationship of society with nature.

We are also contemplating the creation of a space that will begin as a Library and, during the next two years, will be converted into Media Library. This is a center of advanced information that will include areas for research, reading, videos, and computers. We would like to use the latest technology (Internet, CD-ROM, information flow between institutions, communication with research centers, national and international higher education institution, etc). In this space, our visitors will inquire about and respond to questions provoked by their visit to the Museum.

The Multimedia Projection Auditorium will promote direct interaction between the Museum and the general public. We will adapt the existing Universum exhibit hall to present audiovisual programs and issues that will enlighten the public, present problems in the environment and solutions to these problems. While the Auditorium will be scientific in nature, it will also include global cultural expressions with film cycles, documentaries, and films by independent producers. We will also contact distribution firms and national and international artists and cultural organizations that would like to present productions that require open forums for experimentation and critique. The MNH is also considering the construction of an Open Air Auditorium with a design conforming to the re-forested area outside the Museum. This space will become an area for concerts, plays, dances and performances..

The Cafeteria and the Museum Shop will be part of a productive link that reinforces the interconnections among Mexico's diverse communities. We will establish a Cultural Certification of the MNH system which reinforces and celebrates the origins, traditions and customs of Mexico's indigenous populations and their achievements in creating a sustainable local economy for their products. It is imperative that the MNH nurture the efforts of the hundreds of indigenous and small growers and cooperatives that have vital and extensive knowledge in managing and conserving their resources. The Cafeteria and the Museum Shop will bypass intermediaries by working directly with community representatives to promote the consumption and purchase of natural organic products and handicrafts as well as raise visitors' consciousness about the work of these communities.

The MNH is part of the world-renowned Chapultepec Park. We will create programs in partnership with Chapultepec's manage to conduct workshops, publications, exhibitions, reforestation initiatives, and other programs throughout the park's 600 hectares.

Our mission cannot be achieved without a strong, long-term financial and audience development strategy. We are developing funding strategies according to the specific needs of each project and have hired a consultant to assist us in our planning. We are also conducting a study of our existing public, through focus groups, to determine their visiting habits and specific needs. We plan on creating a "Friends of the Museum of Natural History" and a Board of Directors with local and international representatives from different sectors of society that will reinforce and promote the MNH's mission local and internationally. Our board members will assist the MNH's management team in setting guidelines for the Museum's administration, financial objectives for our five million dollar fundraising campaign, and short and long-term goals related to the MNH's functioning on a day to day basis. We will create an endowment or similar type of legal commission that will regulate and manage the funds that will be obtained through our fundraising initiatives, both in-kind donations and cash. The planning and implementation of our fundraising campaign began in the spring of 1998 and is scheduled to conclude in the year 2000 to coincide with Mexico's presidential elections.

The MNH will designate and coordinate a community-based Evaluation Committee comprised, among others, of members of our existing public. This committee will set criteria for evaluating our fundraising and audience development efforts. We consider that, even though we will set quantitative and qualitative evaluation tools for the Museum's different departments, those who will, ultimately, be responsible for the evaluation are those individuals, groups and organizations, communities, and institutions that make use of the spaces, exhibitions and activities.

The Museum of Natural History of Mexico City, through its mission and programs, believes that human beings can no longer be simple observers, least of all perceive themselves as masters of the environment, one that they are capable of dominating and controlling. The search for a new relationship between societies and their immediate and planetary surroundings indispensable. One cannot speak of nature and science without appealing to the arts and humanities or allowing some room for the infinite manifestations that maintain our different cultures alive throughout our planet. We believe that just as every nation has right to express itself without impositions and hierarchies, individuals have the right to demonstrate their creativity.

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