The Ulster Museum is located in the Botanical Gardens in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and has around 8,000 square metres of public display space, featuring material from the collections of Fine and Applied Art, Archaeology, Ethnography, Treasures from the Spanish Armada, Local History, Numismatics, Industrial Archaeology, Botany, Zoology and Geology. The Museum was founded as the Belfast Natural History Society in 1821 and began exhibiting in 1833. It has included an art gallery since 1890. In 1929, the museum moved to its present location, the new building was designed by James Cumming Wynne. A major extension by Francis Pym was begun in 1962 and opened in 1964. It is in the Brutalist Style,praised by David Evans for the “almost barbaric power of its great cubic projections and cantilevers brooding over the conifers of the botanic gardens like a mastodon”.

Since the 1940s the Ulster Museum has built up very good collection of art by modern Irish, and particularly Northern Irish, artists.

In 1998, the Ulster Museum, which includes Armagh County Museum, merged with the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and the Ulster-American Folk Park to form the National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland, MAGNI.

In July 2005, a £12m refurbishment of the museum was announced, with funding coming from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. In October 2006 the museum closed its doors until 2009, to allow for the refurbishment work.

The Ulster Museum contains important collections of birds, Irish mammals, insects, molluscs, marine invertebrates, flowering plants, algae and lichens, as well as an archive of books and manuscripts relating to Irish natural history. The museum also maintains a natural history website named Habitas.  In the late 1980s and the early 1990s it had a permanent exhibition on dinosaurs which has since been scaled back considerably. There is also a collection of rocks, minerals and fossils.

Ulster Museum

Zoology

List of zoological collections

Historic

• Joseph Whitaker early 20th century, mounted birds from Sicily.
• William Thompson mid 19th century author of Natural History of Ireland, Mollusca, birds, algae.
• Robert Templeton (Belfast, Colombo) mid 19th century insects from Ceylon.
• George Crawford Hyndman mollusca and Indian birds.
• William Monad Crawford early 20th century Butterflies from Burma.
• Canon William Frederick Johnson early 20th century, Coleoptera.
• Charles Langham early 20th century, Irish insects European butterflies.
• H.M Peebles Himalayan snow butterflies (Parnassiinae)
• Robert Welch early 20th century Mollusca.
• Herbert T Malcolmson early 20th century James Sheals bird mounts (Ireland).
• Thomas Workman late 19th century Lepidoptera

Recent

• Paul Wilcox (1943- ) Butterflies of Malaya.
• Paul Smart (1941- ) Tropical butterflies
• Raymond Haynes Irish Butterflies Moths
• James P. Brock Ichneumonidae
• Shell collections, Nudibranchs and Sea sponges
• J.R.Stoffel Types of Agrias butterflies

Important individual specimens

• Holotype of Emperor Penguin collected by Captain Crozier of Banbridge
• Champion Patrick of Ifold - Irish wolfhound^[3]
• Dwarf elephant skeletons from Sicily.
• The Egyptian mummified body of Takabuti.
• Mummy case of Tjesmutperet.
• Slender-billed Curlew
• Rothschild's, Queen Alexandra's and other Birdwing butterflies.
• Giant Clam - given to the Belfast Natural History Society by Francis Walker
• Lammergeier mount by James Sheals
• Gervais' Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon europaeus)
• Japanese spider crab
• Bonaparte's Gull collected by William Thompson - the first European specimen.
• Giant squid Model
• Thylacine
• Coelacanth
• Bald Eagle Juvenile from near Garrison, County Fermanagh on 11 January 1973.
• Passenger Pigeon
• Irish Elk
• Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Irish specimen)

Wildlife art

The Zoology Department also maintains collections of Wildlife Art. Works by Peter Scott, Joseph Wolf, Eric Ennion, John Gerrard Keulemans, Roger Tory Peterson, Charles Tunnicliffe, Robert Gillmor and Archibald Thorburn are included. Illustrated works held by the Zoology Department include British Entomology - being illustrations and descriptions of the genera of insects found in Great Britain and Ireland — a classic work of entomology by John Curtis.

Botany

The Herbarium (BEL)

The herbarium in the Ulster Museum (BEL), is based on specimens from Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society (founded in 1821); the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club (founded in 1863); the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery (formed 1905) and the herbarium (BFT) of the Botany Departmeny of Queen's University, Belfast acquired in 1968. In total the number of specimens is more than 100,000. Although specimens from Northern Ireland are well represented, specimens from elsewhere in the world have been acquired by donation, exchange and purchase. All branches of the world's flora are represented: algae, lichens, fungi, mosses and pteridophytesconifers and angiosperms. Little information about the Irish flora before 1830 is available, the oldest specimen in the Ulster Museum is an alga: Batrachospermum moniliforme (BEL: F41) collected in 1798 by John Templeton, other specimens of Batrachospermum, originally incorrectly identified as Thorea ramoissima were collected by John Templeton in 1815 from a "boghole" in Co. Donegal (BEL:F42 - F47). It was originally published by Harvey in 1841.  (ferns),

List of some of the collectors

• S.A.Bennett (1843 — 1929)
• Corrie Denew Chase (1878 — 1965). (vascular plants and algae) — his herbarium of about 4,000 sheets was passed to Methodist College Belfast who passed it to the museum in 1970.
• John Cocks (1787 — 1861) (algae)
• Thomas Hughes Corry (1859 — 1883) (vascular plants).
• A. Fenton (A.F-G.Fenton) (lichens)
• M.Foslie (algae)
• Paul Hackney (1945 — ) (vascular plants and mosses)
• William Henry Harvey (1811 — 1866) (algae).
• George Crawford Hyndman (1796 — 1867) (algae).
• Frederick Hugh Woodhams Kerr (1885 — 1958) (vascular plants)
• Mary Patriria Happer Kertland (1901 — 1991) (vascular plants)
• William McCalla (c.1814 — 1849) (algae).
• Osborne Morton (1945 — ) (lichens and algae)
• Robert Lloyd Praeger (1865 — 1953) (vascular plants)
• Arthur Wilson Stelfox (1883 — 1972) (vascular plants)
• Samuel Alexander Stewart (1826 — 1910) (vascular plants)
• John Templeton (Botanist)John Templeton (1766 — 1825) (algae).
• William Thompson (1805 — 1852) (algae).
• Sylvanus Wear (1858 — 1920) (vascular plants and algae)
• Coslett Herbert Waddell (1858 — 1919) (vascular plants, Bryophyta and algae).

1960s Art

The collection contains works by:

Jean Dubuffet

Morris Louis

Anthony Caro

Karel Appel

Francis Bacon

Joseph Beuys

Eduardo Paolozzi

Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy

Past Art Exhibitions

Partial List

• Scultura Italiana 1964
• Henri Laurens, 16 July-30 August, 1971

Ethnographic Collections

Chola Art[2]]Bronze statues from the Chola Dynasty.

Samurai Armour

Solomon Islands war canoe. Similar boat

Girona

The museum acquired Armada artefacts from the Galleass Girona (ship) in 1971.

Action

The Ulster Museum is now closed to the public for renovation, this will take about three years and cost about £12m. Its character will be dramatically changed. Meanwhile all the specimens are lodged in an outside store. Books and journals, not regularly required, have been sent to an archive store and temporary buildings have been erected for the academic staff while the building is being renovated.

15.05.2007 Builders have not yet been appointed and the alterations have not yet begun.

31.05.2007 Botany Department is now inaction in the Cultra site.