natural history museum audio tour

National Museum of Natural History Virtual Tours

Access the tours.

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History virtual tours allow visitors to take self-guided, room-by-room tours of select exhibits and areas within the museum from their desktop or mobile device. Visitors can also access select collections and research areas at our satellite support and research stations as well as past exhibits no longer on display.

Virtual Tour Tips

• To navigate between adjoining rooms in the tours, click on the blue arrow links on the floor or use the navigation map in the upper right of the presentation screen.
• Look for the camera icon which gives you a close-up view of a particular object or exhibit panel.
• Try zooming in as some of the images are stitched together from individual pictures in order to create very high resolution gigapixel images.

Please note: This tour and these presentations have been tested and should work on all common devices, browsers, and operating systems (using a desktop computer with Windows, Mac, Linux or a mobile device such as an iPhone, iPad, or Android). Functionality and appearance may vary as it will adjust automatically to accommodate the most visitors. While the virtual tour has no advertising, ad blocking software or browser settings that block JavaScript and/or XML may interfere with the functionality of the virtual tour. Please let us know what you think of the tour and how the experience can be improved. Send your feedback to the NMNH Web Team .

Site Credit: Imagery and coding by Loren Ybarrondo

Equipment Used: Professional Nikon digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera bodies and lenses. The photography is typically done using rectilinear lenses with minimized distortion and shooting equirectangular panoramas at 22K pixels on the long side.

Software Used: No authoring software is used. The tours are hand-coded in HTML5 and JavaScript using the krpano graphics library.

• Smithsonian Institution
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Host an Event

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

One of the premier museums in the United States. Enjoy your stay and we hope you learn something new!

This tour is also available in  Español (Spanish) .

Success - Tour Downloaded!

To add a shortcut on your homescreen:, 1. click the share button in safari.

2. Find and Click the add to homesceen button

The download option is for mobile devices

Visit this page on your Android or Apple devices to download.

Link: https://www.youraudiotour.com/tours/the-smithsonian-national-museum-of-natural-history, 1. click the menu button in chrome.

Tour download has started

Working... this may take a few minutes..

TIP: If you have trouble accessing the tour offline try clearing your cache and downloading again.

Something went wrong!

Please try clearing your cache and downloading again.

• The Rotunda LISTEN
• Fossils LISTEN
• Dinosaurs - Carnivores LISTEN
• Dinosaurs - Herbivores LISTEN
• Ice Age LISTEN
• African Culture LISTEN
• The Ocean Hall LISTEN
• Human Origins LISTEN
• Mammals LISTEN
• Thanks for Visiting LISTEN

Natural History Museum with Self-Guided Audio Tour

• Free timed-entry ticket to the Natural History Museum: no standing in lines
• Downloadable multimedia audio tour on the WeGoTrip app (in English) - 20Euros
• Step-by-step navigation through museum halls
• Offline functionality, audio narration, and written text explanations
• Recommendations for your further exploration of London
• 10% discount across all of our tours with promo code
• Entry/Admission - Natural History Museum
• Guaranteed to skip the lines
• Personal guide — you will get the tour on the mobile app
• Headphones — you should bring your own
• Not wheelchair accessible
• Near public transportation
• Confirmation will be received at time of booking
• Most travellers can participate
• The mobile app is available on the App Store and Google Play and works offline
• Offline Mode: Download tours in advance to listen without WiFi
• After payment, you will receive an SMS and an email with detailed instructions. Download the app from the App Store or Google Play. All you need is a mobile phone. Internet access is not required
• For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours in advance of the start date of the experience.

• 479darciea 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Windsor Castle Windsor and the Castle are so cool. Wish you could see more of the castle and grounds. But just so cool! Read more Written 22 October 2023
• Getthestepsin 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Great time Was great tour and the guide was brilliant would recommend to all ripper fans and to top it all our guide was called Jack x Read more Written 14 February 2023
• Jordys_Mom2016 0 contributions 4.0 of 5 bubbles Loved the tour - app for audio download fussy Really well laid out. The audio app we downloaded was fussy. Difficult to get oriented with it. Loved the history and how well the tour was laid out Read more Written 28 October 2022
• MichaelPWeymouth 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Visit Henry the Eighths house of Horrors, The Tower of London We took the on off bus tour through an on off bus tour company. We took public transportation back the next day. The admission ticket included a partial tour which included the Royal Jewells. The gentleman who conducted the tour a former vet in the UK Military was knowledgeable, outgoing & articulate. Read more Written 22 October 2022
• Mark W 0 contributions 2.0 of 5 bubbles Waste of money Make sure you read the fine print about bringing your own headphones to listen to the audio tour. What they don’t tell you Is that museum entrance is free so all the money we spent was for a useless audio tour that we had trouble accessing and didn’t bring Bluetooth headphones for. Love TripAdvisor suggestions but this one was a waste Read more Written 1 October 2022
• mrscherylgleason 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Amazing history The collection of armor for many kings was beautiful. A beautiful, the largest diamond in the queens septet along with the crowns, the bedrooms of kings and queens the view along the river. It was really fascinating. I would definitely go again. Read more Written 19 September 2022
• Nichola R 0 contributions 1.0 of 5 bubbles Rip off scammers 0/5- you charged me when it was free! I demand my money back! They did not offer the self guided pace and said it was free what I bought! Read more Written 14 July 2022
• NeilMaz71 0 contributions 1.0 of 5 bubbles Complete RIP-OFF Museum is great but…..DO NOT buy a “ticket” from here because the museum entrance is actually FREE. I paid $20 and then waited in the same line as all the other attendees who got in for FREE. Complete rip-off! Read more Written 23 June 2022
• camronshelton 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Of with his head! The history was just stunning. You could feel Henry the VIII and Elizabeth I prescense throughout the visit. The Crown Jewels were mesmerizing. If you love anything Royal or Castles and history you won’t go wrong coming to this. Be prepared to walk up lots of stairs. Some of them small and steep. Read more Written 22 May 2022
• Z8597EFcarolp 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles London tower visit Tour guide Shaddy was excellent, informed us all about the barbaric events that took place in the tower with a fun twist. 10 out of 10. Read more Written 6 May 2022
• Y2984WFkevina 0 contributions 2.0 of 5 bubbles Difficulty with tickets. Very stressful to get tickets. I printed the voucher and downloaded the app to get the bar code, but app did not work. We were rejected at the gate saying we needed the barcode or we needed to repurchase tickets. After phone calls and delays, we did get tickets. I would recommend anyone who wants to see Tower if London to buy their tickets on site to save hassle and grief. Read more Written 16 April 2022
• christinesO4009GA 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Great place I wasn’t able to attend! But it was a beautiful place! Due to some health reasons, wasn’t able to go inside, but it’s a beautiful place. Read more Written 4 April 2022
• A3009QBmariak 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles Great day of learning and humour! Shady is a fantastic guide! Our Guide Shady! He was awesome bless him, we all started off a bit lacklustre (mainly for my husband and myself cos we were already shattered from the walking and travelling we'd done that day) but he made us laugh with his jokes (which I think some of them were his own) and was full of knowledge about the Towers and the gruesome executions. Also The Ravens - my husband had to practically drag me away I could of watched them all day they are beautiful! Read more Written 18 March 2022
• Armida C 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles A trip through time It was so interesting and so much fun, I can’t wait to come back again. I love feeling like I was transported back in time!! Read more Written 5 March 2022
• hammonse001 0 contributions 5.0 of 5 bubbles A Must when visiting London I love love love the tower. There is so much to do and see here. You could easily visit more than once and see or learn something every time. I would definitely go earlier in the day. If you are unsure of doing a tour try the audio guide first. If you come back the beefeater guides are fantastic as well. Read more Written 15 February 2022

More to explore in London

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Natural History Museum with Self-Guided Audio Tour provided by WeGoTrip London | In-App Audio Tours

Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History

 audio tours.

We are thrilled to launch two audio tours, created by Museum volunteers, that you can follow along with on the izi.travel website or mobile application!

One tour takes listeners through the Pacific Grove section of the Coastal Recreation Trail, discussing the area’s diverse natural and cultural history. The other audio tour guides visitors through the Pacific Grove Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, enriching the interpretive signs situated along the trail. Listen to the whole tour, or select specific stops that interest you! Each tour also has written transcripts of the audio and related photographs.

How to get Started:

Click on the buttons below, or search for “Pacific Grove Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary” and “A Natural History Tour of the PG Recreation Trail” on the izi.travel website or application. Enjoy the tours!

Pacific Grove Monarch Butterfly Sactuary

A Natural History Tour of the Pacific Grove Recreation Trail

OUR MISSION is To inspire discovery, wonder, and stewardship of our natural world.

Natural History Museum of Utah Launches Audio Tours in English and Spanish and a Descriptive Tour for Visitors with Low Vision

SALT LAKE CITY, UT – Feb. 24, 2022— Like having an “expert in your ear,” a new audio tour device will give visitors to the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) the chance to experience exhibits anew.

The Insider Stories audio tours, a top priority for the Museum for years, has been made possible by a generous grant from the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation. “We’re excited about the amazing difference the audio tours are going to make for museum visitors of every age,” said Foundation President & COO Lisa Eccles, “sparking everyone’s curiosity and making learning more fun than ever. The stories really make the collections ‘come to life’ in wonderful new ways, from mollusks and mammals to dinosaurs and dragonflies … and so much more!”

“ Insider Stories tours take an unusual approach,” said Lisa Thompson, NHMU exhibit developer and co-creator of the audio guides, produced by Sandpail Productions. “Rather than listening to one narrator, you’ll hear directly from more than 20 scientists and experts sharing behind-the-scenes stories of the objects on display, along with their fascinating history. Even if you’ve visited the Museum many times, you’ll discover new perspectives on what you see as these experts ‘join you’ on your tour.”

Featuring 29 exhibits throughout the Museum's permanent galleries, the audio tours are provided free for Museum members and $2 for non-members.  They are available now in English and Spanish, with additional languages to be added in the coming months.

A Descriptive Audio Tour has also been created for those with low vision. In addition, the museum is the first in Utah to become an Aira ‘free zone,’ offering access to a free Aira smartphone application providing access for those with low vision or blindness to highly trained “sighted agents” who provide added information and descriptions in real time.

“These new multiple-language audio tours, along with the Descriptive Tour and Aira application, are a huge step forward in our Museum’s commitment to accessibility and welcoming a wide and diverse audience from near and far to explore Utah’s natural history,” says Echo Paixao, coordinator for the Museum’s public programs and education accessibility.

For more information about Insider Stories , please visit: https://nhmu.utah.edu/insider-stories .

For more from NHMU including tickets to visit the Museum, please visit: nhmu.utah.edu .

Related Press Releases

From the Ground Up Debuts in Changing Exhibit Gallery

From the Ground Up debuts in changing exhibit gallery at the newly opened NHMU.

Experience The Nature of Color at NHMU, a New Special Exhibition Opening February 26, 2022

Explore the Nature of Color, a new special exhibition opening to the public February 26, 2022 at the Natural History Museum of Utah.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Museums Are Changing How They Bring Natural Sciences to Life

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is rolling out two new exhibition halls and making its scientists more accessible. And don’t forget the dinosaurs.

By John Hanc

Reporting from Cleveland

This article is part of our Museums special section about how institutions are striving to offer their visitors more to see, do and feel.

Guiding a visitor along the 22-foot-high, 406-foot-long curtain of glass fronting the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s new exhibit hall, Caitlin Colleary spots a familiar face — one from which three large horns are protruding.

“Triceratops is here!” Colleary, a paleontologist, exclaims.

Yes, Trudy the Triceratops (as she has been nicknamed by Colleary and her colleagues) arrived a few days early in her new home — all six tons of her, perched on a platform amid tarps and wood scattered around the floor of the new hall, still eight months away from completion.

Trudy — a casting from the American Museum of Natural History in New York — was the first of her prehistoric pals to be moved into this new location in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. From here, she can stand, with a menacing look, brandishing her distinctive, three-foot-long horns.

Trudy has been placed by the glass wall of the 50,000-square-foot exhibit hall called Dynamic Earth, one of two halls under construction at the museum, and scheduled to open in December. The $150 million renovation features a second, 25,000-square-foot hall called Evolving Life, not to mention a redesign of the museum’s facade.

It’s the most significant makeover of the 104-year-old museum since it moved from downtown Cleveland to its current location in the University Circle neighborhood, near the campus of Case Western Reserve University, in 1955.

The inside and outside transformation is designed to do nothing less than reinvent the concept of a natural-history museum — starting with its appearance. The goal is to make the building, as Joshua Haney of DLR Group, the principal architect, put it, “a little less fortresslike.”

Other museums around the country are similarly transforming their buildings and exhibits to allow visitors to better, and more personally, connect with the sciences, as well as to spark greater community engagement and dialogue about how science can help address major societal issues, such as global warming.

Museums dedicated to the natural sciences — a term that encompasses a wide range of modern scientific disciplines related to the natural world, including geology, evolutionary biology, astronomy, zoology as well as paleontology — have long been associated with dark spaces and nature dioramas.

But the presence of Trudy in what is going to be a high-visibility location in the museum’s new wing is a reminder of what the biggest attractions at natural science museums are — and have been since the late 19th century, when Victorian England was captivated by the earliest specimens and renderings of what were then referred to as “impossible monsters.”

“I like to call dinosaurs the gateway drug to natural history,” said Sonia Winner, the Cleveland Museum’s president and chief executive. “You can’t have a museum like this without them. But we need to evolve, and we need to really think about how we can be civic institutions and share ideas with the community about the knowledge we’ve discovered, and even the knowledge that is still being debated.”

Indeed, dinosaurs are still prominent — on this Wednesday in late March, spring break week for public schools in Cleveland, children swarm over the spiny back of “Steggie,” the life-size stegosaurus model outside the main entrance, and gaze up in awe at “Happy” (short for Haplocanthosaurus delfsi ), the 70-foot-long, 14-foot-high sauropod whose reconstructed skeleton dominates the main visitor hall.

But the ever-popular dinosaurs — a total of about 18 fossilized specimens — will now share the spotlight with some impressive new technology and architectural changes designed to connect visitors to the natural world. The goal is to do so more vividly and intimately, perhaps, than through the diaromas of nature scenes and Native Americans that were also once at the core of its exhibits (and that have now been put into storage).

The new glass wall is of a grander scale: Its 86 panels provide a transparent portal to the natural world outside — specifically, to the layers of limestone laid along the outside perimeter of the museum, to simulate the striated ledges of rock left about 12,000 years ago by the receding Laurentide Ice Sheet (the museum used as its model for this similar limestone patterns that can today be found along parts of nearby Lake Erie — itself a product of the glacier, which gouged out the Great Lakes).

The connection between the museum and that ice sheet, which covered much of what is now Ohio, is most evident in its new exterior motif, completed last October. With its gentle, wavy lines, it was created, said Mark Morris of DLR Group, its lead designer, “to mimic the flow of a glacier.” A drop-shaped feature in the middle of the facade is designed to symbolize the melting glacier, and also serves as a functioning spout, draining rainwater from the museum’s roof and into the ground.

Beyond the limestone shelves — where once stood a parking lot — the museum’s two-acre grounds have now been landscaped into a prairie of native Ohio grasses and plants, thus completing the symbolic links between the natural evolution of Northeastern Ohio and the one interpreted inside the natural history museum. The museum’s lawn now forms a kind of moraine from the receding glacier, which is depicted through the layers of stone and the glacier-inspired design of the museum itself.

The innovative new design and exhibit halls are, museum officials said, a template for a new kind of natural history museum — one that features more interactive, locally relevant and community-engaging exhibits and programming.

A nonstructural example of how that accessibility and communication with the public is encouraged here is “Scientists Unleashed,” a recently initiated program in which the 25 members of the museum’s science and curatorial staff spend five hours a week on the museum floor, answering visitor questions and occasionally offering pop-up demonstrations. “People need to have conversations with our scientists, with our staff,” said Gavin Svenson, the museum’s chief science officer. “That’s how you demystify science.”

Colleary, the paleontologist, said her hours spent on the museum’s floor, interacting with visitors, is “my favorite time of the week.”

The question of how to better engage with visitors is not only being asked in Cleveland. “Everybody’s trying to figure out the best ways to communicate science to the public,” said Cristofer Nelson, president and chief executive of the Association of Science and Technology Centers in Washington, D.C . One way, he says, is by making it local. “What we’ve found is that talking about global climate change makes the problem too big for a lot of people,” Nelson said. “So a number of natural history and science museums are focusing on how science can solve local challenges.”

In some ways, they are ideally suited for the task. “Museums like ours have the power to convene and the power to inspire,” said Tim Ritchie, president of Boston’s Museum of Science. “We need to be a place where people in our community can come together to think about what kind of a world we want.”

Erika Shugart, executive director and chief executive of the National Science Teaching Association, calls that local connection “incredibly valuable.” He added, “One of the things we know about students is that they feel more connected to learning when they do so in their community.”

Nelson cites as an example the Utah Climate Challenge, a multiplayer interactive game at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City, in which visitors are invited to balance such variables as food, water and energy to manage climate change in the Salt Lake Valley.

Players gather at five touch-screen monitors while watching the effects of their decisions play out on a projected panorama of the region. “It was like you’re walking into a giant video game,” said Nelson, who visited the Utah museum recently. “That’s an example of a natural-history museum taking on a topic like climate change in a way that is locally relevant and fostering dialogue.”

At the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, one of the top priorities is helping visitors better understand the not-always-obvious natural world of their community. “We want to remind people that we’re not just a concrete jungle,” says Lori Bettison-Varga, the museum’s president and director. “There is nature in L.A., and we believe that if you have a better understanding of what’s in your backyard and your neighborhood you’ll have a much better appreciation of life on our planet.”

Thus, while their life-size dioramas of wildlife in California and the Pacific Northwest are still among the Los Angeles museum’s signature exhibits, a new area will soon be opened that reflects the latest thinking: NHM Commons, a 75,000-square-foot space that will feature a theater, a cafe and new seating and exhibition areas, serving as a sort of “front porch” to the museum.

There, said Bettison-Varga, “we hope to spark conversations around science.”

A likely conversation starter among visitors to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, once its transformation is complete, will be an exhibit called “We’re All Stardust,” an interactive light sculpture that will anchor one of the two new halls and use infrared camera technology, a powerful game engine and projection mapping techniques to create a dramatic simulation of a supernova.

Also part of this exhibit is a feature that allows visitors to see on a large screen their own silhouettes fill up with floating particles of stardust (a reminder that we all have our origins in the elements of the stars).

But the museum knows that all the community-centered events and high-tech effects won’t be as effective without the crowd-pleasing presence of those giant extinct reptiles. In fact, only a few days after Trudy the Triceratops was relocated to her new perch, her fossilized friend, Tony the Tyrannosaurus rex (yes, he’s got a nickname too) made his grand entrance in the new exhibit hall.

Together, the two dinosaurs will help attract visitors to the new wing as they glare through the glass at the outside world — made closer in this new vision of a natural-history museum.

Volcanoes and Earthquakes

Listen to the Volcanoes and Earthquakes gallery audio descriptive guide.

Start your tour either at the Museum's Exhibition Road entrance, at the entrance to the Volcanoes and Earthquakes gallery, or listen to each track on the tour individually.

An experimental art and science space inside one of the oldest Russian museums

The Polytechnic Museum was founded in the Russian Empire in 1872, making it one of the oldest science and technology museums of the world. The Museum has always inspired and supported young professionals; since the very beginning one of its missions has been drawing the audience's interest to knowledge and achievements of the human mind. Today the Polytechnic Museum, widely known as PolyTech, is renovating not only its historical main building, but also its approach to achieving the main goal: going beyond collection, lectures and exhibitions. The new PolyTech is a platform for scientific discussions, educational projects, intellectual efforts and media communication in every available form. Museeum met with Natalia Fuchs, interdisciplinary projects curator at the Polytechnic Museum, to find out more about an exciting new project – the “Electronic Livingroom” – cross-disciplinary platform, offering programs for everyone interested in technology and art.

How did the idea of the Electronic Livingroom come around?

"Polytechnic Museum has begun the modernization project a few years back: our historical building has been under reconstruction for sometime now (it will only be reopened in 2017-2018), so in order to engage our audience, we started working with various venues and institutions – VDNKh (that’s where the Electronic Livingroom is located) Strelka Institute, ZIL Center, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Multimedia Art Museum and others. For years the museum has been building a community for kids, teenagers and adults interested in science. Today we organize exhibitions, lectures, discussions, screenings and festivals throughout Moscow for every age group. Our newest project – Electronic Livingroom is meant to be a scene for media and sound artists, musicians, performers, curators and technological community. Every professional in audiovisual arts and audiovisual technology is part of our demographic. One of our aims is to promote technology and science to everyone interested in media art".

Today museums try to create events for a bigger audience. Why did you decide to develop a program for such a narrow group? It looks like an intimate space for a few people.

"And it is! Actually big ideas require intimate space at first. We are truly happy when our livingroom is full of guests on the day we present a new AV performance that involves new technologies or a specific area of scientific research; when we discover young media artists or when we organize lectures and public talks for a very specific target audience (innovative research, technology or science professionals). We establish direct contact with opinion makers, “it-girls” and “it-boys” of science. Electronic Livingroom was launched as a creative laboratory or curatorial studio, it was not meant to be a public social club, but throughout the first year, public interest grew so fast that now several laboratories exist in the Electronic Livingroom framework: Laboratory of Interactive Performance (run together with media artist Alexey Yepishev and choreographer Yulia Chekmas), Audiovision Lab (with co-curator Alexey Shcherbina), and McLuhan Club (with media researcher from Higher School of Economics Varvara Tchumakova). It is now a platform to collaborate with established and young artists, with international organizations, a place to produce projects for international festivals and exhibitions. But still it feels cozy. “Intimacy” in this case works really well. The livingroom has grown, but the audience is supportive and understanding, we continuously work to secure that. Luckily artists and technologists have a chance to work together, combining contemporary audiovisual art with modern technology in a very comfortable setting of the Electronic Livingroom at the Polytechnic Museum".

"We want to safeguard a place where creative minds can develop and test their bold ideas, a sort of supportive audience for media artists", - Natalia Fuchs.

Would you say that the Electronic Livingroom is mostly for art, science and music professionals with profound knowledge on the subject? Is your program adapted for an average art lover?

"We always think of people who come in for the first time and want to have an idea of what audiovisual art, sound, electronic and experimental music are in relation to technology and science; what multimedia and visualization is to modern society; how minds, ecology and the world are being influenced. We don’t want the Livingroom to be hostile to new audiences. Public talks and lectures give a better understanding of the subject to wider audience. We organize audiovisual performances and concerts where people can enjoy music and visuals, ask questions, meet artists and other guests, find more information on our projects. It is a good way-in for art lovers: friendly atmosphere and easy-going discussions; also it is a space, where the open minded technology specialists can contribute to contemporary art with technology and science. We are always there to help people communicate and we are happy when our public events lead to new collaborations".

What were the most interesting events you organized in the Electronic Livingroom so far?

"Now it's the right time to think of our past season, but it's difficult to point out the most significant events. We cover a wide spectrum of genres and areas trying to think of unusual forms of representation and performative aspects of modern culture. We hosted two lecture series: Nick Zavriev's lectures on electronic music (where we learned not only the history, but also key compositions in this genre) and Andrey Orlov’s lectures on technology of electronic music. Andrey showed his legendary collection – old school synthesizers, drum machines and so on and dwelled on the creative processes. During the AV live series we showed audiovisual performances by many local experimental artists (::vtol::, Alexei Borisov, Solo Operator, Pavel Zhagun, Alexander Senko and others), labels (Kotä Records, Art-Tek) and international guests (Nicolas Melmann, Peter Kirn, Mico Rex, Thorsten Storno, Arma, Paul Roth, Ian Douglas-Moore). Sometimes our Electronic Livingroom was turned into a gallery. Last August we hosted “Cage suite” audiovisual installation (Videoformes festival, France)".

Are you planning to recreate any key sound art performances?

"Next year we will launch lecture series researching what sound performances are all about. Maybe recreation of performances will come up as an outcome of this lecture series, let’s see! For now the Electronic Livingroom hosted Polytech.Science.Art workshop dedicated to Synesthesia and the reconstruction of historical Soviet light-and-sound machine Crystall. The reconstruction has not yet come to an end, we work on it together with Russian artist ::vtol:: and construction bureau Prometheus, where this machine originally came out in the 1960s".

Do you think the Electronic Livingroom will turn into a new type of an intellectual club?

"It is already an intellectual club! There are ongoing sessions on audiovisual context and electronic arts, on many pivotal subjects. Our main concern now is moving back to our historical building in the heart of Moscow. I believe it will be the powerful place bringing people together. So the potential is right there. It is “in the blood” of the Polytechnic Museum, since it has always been an important place for intellectuals in Moscow and we aim to develop our projects to bring in anyone open-minded and everyone thinking outside the box".

Get the books

Julia Tarasyuk

Julia is an art consultant and art writer with over a decade of experience collaborating with museums, galleries and independent art projects in Russia, UK, France and Japan. She is currently based in Tokyo, where she organises art projects and… Read more

From the Listen category

How one collector's passion led to an entire museum of bedtime stories

Music and youth culture rock at the coolest museum in Denmark

A Horror House museum that will leave you quaking in your boots

Back to the past of games and computers in Poland

It’s all about getting clean at the Museum of Soap and History of Dirt

Party with Copernicus and other scientific geniuses in Warsaw's science museum

These podcasts bring museums to your ears

A glassblowing boat tour on the Erie Canal

Former public toilet is home for a punk museum

• Things to Do
• Restaurants
• Vacation Rentals
• Travel Stories
• Rental Cars
• Add a Place
• Travel Forum
• Travelers' Choice
• Help Center

A good introduction to natural history - State Darwin Museum

• Europe    
• Russia    
• Central Russia    
• Moscow    
• Moscow - Things to Do    
• State Darwin Museum

This is one of the most happening place where there is some events going on and with knowledge... read more

It's a 4-story building housing permanent collection and 6-story exposition center with temporary... read more

A good introduction to natural history

Liked: great Collection of animals from around the world; good introduction to theory of evolution. Even the youngest chilldren will find interesting things to see. However: not so much information in English; the cafeteria was a bit disappointing

Strange that ussr-style staff was more interested in forbidding photoshooting rather than trying to help to find way to next room. Some things have absolutely nothing to do with Darwin and evolution at all. But since there are really plenty of different things - you can find something interesting for you too.

If you are interestet in evolution this museum is a must. I shows many interesting things about evolution. In the first room you can learn about the history of the museum. The next room shows animals that lives in many different enviroments, and what they develop, to live there. There is a big exibition about microevolution. This is the most interesting place, it shows many different aspects of this subject. There is also a good exibition about the history of zoology, and an exibition about macro evolution. I can find to things to complain about: most of the texts are in russian, and some of there phylogenetic trees are not up to date. This is however small things, It is a very good museum.

What a great place! This museum is organized as a place to explain various facets of evolutionary theory including but not limited to, sexual dimorphism, microevolution, and population genetics. There are many samples of various species. I am a professor of evolutionary psychology and wish I could take my students here to teach them about evolution in a tangible way.

Huge halls filled with thousands of animals. Here you can walk for an hour or two with your children or just with your friends . There is a tower, which overlooks the city. The tower separate entrance. Ticket price - from 350 rubles

We came here on our last day in Moscow because it was night of the museums and thus it was open late. But honestly Darwin would be very disappointed if he saw it. Its huge from the outside but very small inside. 5 floors but very few displays, some activities for kids, many pictures and paintings, some live insect and few stuffed animals in really bad shape. I saw pictures here on TripAdvisor from last year with animals we couldnt find in museum today... Its really not worth traveling across the whole Moscow...