Houston, TX

Houston Museum of Natural Science

Address: 5555 Hermann Park Dr., Houston TX 77030 - MAP
Phone: (713) 639-4629
Web: www.hmns.org

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is located in the city's museum district and is one of the most heavily attended museums in the U.S., on par with heavyweight institutions like the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, both in New York City.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science was founded in 1909 and today welcomes more than 2 million visitors a year, 600,000 of them schoolchildren. More than 1 million pieces of objects and specimens are housed in the museum's vast, four-story complex.

Special sections of the museum include the Wortham IMAX Theatre, Cockrell Butterfly Center, Burke Baker Planetarium and the George Observatory.

More than a dozen permanent exhibits explore the worlds of astronomy and space science, Native Americans, chemistry, energy, paleontology and Texas wildlife.