The American Museum of Natural History , on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest natural history museums in the world. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 34 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies more than 2 million square feet . The museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.The one mission statement of the American Museum of Natural History is: "To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
