Burke Museum

Brief Information

The Burke Museum connects the nature and culture of a single region: the Pacific Northwest. It is the largest natural history museum in the U.S. Northwest, but its significance lies not only in its size. Anthropology, geology, and zoology are brought together here in one place, so the totem poles, fossils, and dinosaur skeleton are read not as scattered rarities, but as different ways of telling the story of a territory.

The museum is located on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle. After a temporary closure in 2018, it reopened on October 12, 2019, in a new building and with new exhibits. This fact is important for how it is perceived: what stands before the viewer is not an old cabinet of curiosities, but a museum reassembled around the natural history and cultures of the Northwest.

What to Notice First

It is worth comparing objects that show the region at different scales. Native American totem poles speak of cultural memory and the traditions of Indigenous peoples; beside them, fossils shift the gaze toward the much longer history of the earth. The only dinosaur skeleton in the Northwest sets the museum apart from similar natural science collections, while the remains of Kennewick Man remind us that human history here is also represented through material traces.

The contrast between the major finds is especially revealing. The allosaurus skeleton and the giant sloth fossils belong to natural history, but the sloth is also important because of where it was discovered: it was found during the construction of Sea-Tac International Airport. Because of this, ordinary modern infrastructure is unexpectedly linked to the ancient past. The geological displays help these objects be read not separately, but as traces of processes that shaped the region’s landscape and climate.