Museum of Northern Arizona
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) is one of the great regional museums of our world, located at the base of the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, Arizona. A private, nonprofit institution, the museum was founded in 1928 by a group of Flagstaff citizens to protect and preserve the natural and cultural resources of the Colorado Plateau region.
The Museum of Northern Arizona has evolved into a center for learning with collections, exhibits, educational programs, publications, and research projects. It serves tens of thousands of visitors each year. The museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
Visitors can enjoy galleries and programs that focus on the science, art, and culture of the Colorado Plateau. The museum cares for more than 800,000 artifacts, objects, and specimens in its permanent collections of anthropology, biology, geology, and fine arts with a focus on the Colorado Plateau, including the Grand Canyon.
Harold Sellers Colton, a zoology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, an artist and educator, were instrumental in the creation of the museum after they moved to Flagstaff in 1926. Harold became the museum's first director and Marry-Russell became curator of art and ethnology.[1]
The museum grew from two rooms in the Flagstaff Woman's Club to a 24,700-square-foot exhibits building that opened in 1936 along Highway 180, a road leading to the Grand Canyon.
In 2018, the museum dedicated its Native Peoples of the Colorado Plateau gallery, ethnology exhibition reflects tribal histories, values, and cultures of ten tribes of the Colorado Plateau: Acoma, Dilzhe’e Apache, Diné (Navajo), Havasupai, Hopi, Hualapai, Southern Paiute, Southern Ute, Yavapai, and Zuni.
The museum's administration, research and collections facilities are located across Highway 180 from the exhibition building. The institution also preserves and cares for several gardens and the Colton House, located about 1/2 a mile from the museum it was once the home of Harold and Mary-Russell.
