The Natural World at Our Doorstep

The Jerusalem Foundation and Hebrew University, partners and founders of the Bloomfield Science Museum, worked closely with the Jerusalem Municipality and the Jerusalem Development Authority to advance The Israel Nature Museum, which will be located on National Museum Lane, on a campus shared with the Bloomfield Science Museum. Together, the two museums will build on the Bloomfield Science Museum’s vast experience in the field of scientific and environmental education to provide fun and educational activities to a wide-range of visitors, including local families, youth, adults, and school groups from all sectors of Israeli society.

The Israel Nature Museum will explore the most timely and pressing issues surrounding our rapidly changing planet in the realms of Earth Sciences (sea, land, and atmosphere), Life Sciences (life-forms and biological phenomena), Human Habitation and the Environment, Natural Evolution & Ecology, Astrophysics, and other themes relating to the visible universe. Working closely with scientists and naturalists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Hebrew University’s National Natural History Research Collections, the Museum will address global issues through a local lens. It will arouse in visitors a curiosity and appreciation of the world around them, as well as instill a sense of responsibility to the earth, its inhabitants, and its future.

The Nature Museum will offer a broad, multidisciplinary look at science's universal body of knowledge using a variety of local natural resources and scenic elements. Visitors will be invited to take part in an adventurous journey into the depths of the earth, observe Israel's night skies in the planetarium (one of only a handful of planetariums in Israel), discover the diverse regions and ecosystems of Israel, and learn firsthand about Israel’s incredible biodiversity. As visitors explore the different areas, they will gain an understanding of the relationships that exist between everything in the natural world, while reflecting on important and timely global issues- such as climate change- in relation to progress, technology, and the environment.

As an institution committed to science, education, and the environment, the Museum will play an important role in educating visitors and staff about sustainability practices. The state-of-the-art museum building and surroundings will reflect its scientific principles. Designed by Schwartz Besnosoff + SO Architecture, the winning entry in the Nature Museum's architecture  competition, the Museum will be built in a green, ecologically conscious manner that conserves energy for heating and cooling, collects and uses solar energy, and recycles waste and water. The Museum will be an open, "breathing" structure; a building that connects and converses with its environment, not a closed edifice surrounded by walls and fences. It will seamlessly extend into a garden- featuring pavilion exhibits- that will be open to the public, and serve as a natural haven within Jerusalem’s bustling urban landscape.

The challenge is now to build the Israel Nature Museum in the coming years, and finally add the missing piece to National Museum Lane.