The Muséum pour la Planète endowment fund

The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle is an institute of research excellence and benefits from reputed international scientific expertise, notably in connection to biodiversity.

The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle has nearly 600 researchers and 40 learned societies, covering around twenty disciplines. It is positioned as a reputed scientific establishment, notably on the theme of biodiversity.

The Muséum’s three scientific departments – Origines et Évolution, Adaptation du Vivant, Homme et Environnement – work through research units to produce knowledge on the long history of the Earth, life, humans and societies, and to disseminate this knowledge to all types of audience. They cover multiple research fields, notably those studying biodiversity, and they have a good reputation both nationally and internationally. The Muséum pour la Planète endowment fund provides long-term support for this key mission.

The Muséum pour la Planète endowment fund is committed to supporting the Muséum’s certified explorations, so as to enrich our knowledge of the living world for generations to come. These explorations are characterised by the diversity of disciplines involved and their high scientific quality, as well as by their legal reliability with respect to the local populations and international law. They make it possible to better understand biodiversity, an essential step in monitoring its evolution and protecting it.

Additionally, the Muséum pour la Planète endowment fund supports scientific programmes to protect animal biodiversity in situ, in their natural habitats, and also ex situ, in the Muséum’s three zoological parks. This serves to preserve the genetic diversity of these species and to help the Muséum transmit a sustainable ecosystem to future generations.

With the wealth of its thirteen sites, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle has a unique historical heritage and landscape to be conserved and enhanced.

The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, with its historical heart at the Jardin des Plantes, works at 13 sites in Paris, Île-de-France and across France. These diverse sites include 5 museums of which 4 are historical galleries, 6 botanical gardens and 3 zoological parks, a Marinarium (marine station) and several research centres only open to researchers. So there are many buildings and gardens to be enhanced and restored to ensure the continuation of this unique historical heritage and landscape.

The Muséum pour la Planète endowment fund aims to preserve the Muséum’s gardens and ensure they are handed on to future generations by funding enhancement, restoration and redevelopment works. This support covers the Jardin des Plantes, the historical heart of the Muséum, the Versailles-Chèvreloup Arboretum (Yvelines), the Val Rahmeh-Menton botanical gardens (Alpes-Maritimes) and the Jardin de l’Harmas Jean-Henri-Fabre (Vaucluse).

The endowment fund also provides long-term support to restore the buildings on the Muséum’s sites, particularly those at the Jardin des Plantes, so as to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Muséum’s historical sites. This unique heritage comprises the  Grande Galerie de l’Évolution, the Galerie de Géologie et de Minéralogie, the Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée, the Galerie de Botanique, the Verniquet Amphitheatre, the Hôtel de Magny, the Maison de Buffon, the Pavillon de la Baleine, and the historical buildings of the Ménagerie which require work to guarantee their continued use in the future. These places are important to the Muséum’s missions of conservation and knowledge sharing.

The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle conserves, enriches, enhances the value of and makes accessible one of the three largest natural history collections in the world.

The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle is heir to more than 400 years of scientific research. It seeks to share with as many people as possible its testimonies to the history of natural sciences and to raise awareness in all types of public of the issues related to the conservation of life on our planet through its vast collections.

The Muséum is the custodian of a collection that is unique in both its diversity and scope. More than 67 million specimens are exhibited in the galleries or kept in the storerooms. They have enormous historical value alongside their great scientific interest since they very often serve as reference specimens for researchers. The Muséum also conserves the treasures of one of the largest natural history libraries in the world, and many objects of art including the Muséum’s famous vellum collection. These collections are constantly growing through the relentless exploration of biodiversity carried out by the Muséum’s scientific teams, among others. Recent technical progress has also led to the introduction of new types of collections, for example of a biomolecular nature.

These large collections require constant restoration, additions and accessibility to the public so they can be studied. With this in mind, the Muséum pour la Planète endowment fund aims to provide long-term support for the restoration of specimens, objects and exhibition spaces in order to ensure their proper conservation and to provide visitors with the best conditions to discover the collections.

The endowment fund also aims to fund additions to the Muséum’s collections by participating in the institutions’ collection acquisition policy.

Finally, the endowment fund seeks to support the Muséum in its projects to facilitate the study of these extraordinary collections for scientists from across the world, by funding digitisation and computerisation work for the collections, which are then made freely accessible on-line.

Transmitting knowledge and raising awareness of biodiversity is one of the key missions of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle.

Since its creation, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle has sought to transmit its natural history knowledge to citizens. Today, it plays a key role in raising awareness as widely as possible of the fragility of nature and of the need to preserve it in order to guarantee the future of humanity. The Muséum works to make knowledge about nature available to all through conferences, workshops, projections, debates, exhibitions and participative science programmes. To spread the word, the Muséum uses specimens from its collections as ambassadors of knowledge, presented to please the eye and teach children and adults alike. The Muséum is aimed at everyone: enlightened amateurs, families, disabled people, etc. While its primary goal is to make science attractive and accessible to all, it also aims to enable visitors to become actors in decisions concerning biodiversity.

To help the Muséum in this key mission, the Muséum pour la Planète endowment fund seeks to support the deployment of actions aimed at audiences that are generally prevented from accessing scientific culture, whether they cannot travel or live far from the sites, notably those in hospital and prison settings and isolated rural areas. The Fund supports the development of knowledge dissemination tools such as light exhibitions in innovative formats, conceived as a means of facilitating exchange and discussions in the context of interventions proposed by welcoming teams that have been trained by professionals from the Muséum.

The endowment fund also supports educational actions in schools, notably by funding Vigie-Nature École, the participative science programme aimed at primary and secondary school pupils. This makes it possible to raise these pupils’ awareness of the need to observe and preserve biodiversity while providing a large amount of scientific data for the Muséum to feed into its research.

The Muséum pour la Planète endowment fund thanks its donors and sponsors for their generous support, and in particular:

• Caisse d’Épargne Île-de-France
• Van Cleef & Arpels