The
American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as
AMNH), located on the
Upper West Side of
Manhattan,
New York City, is one of the largest
museums in the world. Located in park-like grounds across the street from
Central Park, the museum complex comprises 27 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 32 million specimens of plants, humans, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, and human cultural artifacts, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies . 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.