Why visit
Staten Island Museum traces its origins to the Natural Science Association of Staten Island, founded in 1881 by local naturalists. The institution now occupies the renovated A Building at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, where galleries bring natural history, art and human history together under one borough-focused mission.
What to see
Natural-science holdings record animals, plants, geology and environmental change on Staten Island. The art collection spans antiquity through contemporary work, while historical artifacts, maps, photographs, documents and archives preserve evidence of Indigenous communities, immigration, industry, institutions and everyday life.
Plan your visit
Exhibitions draw connections across those disciplines rather than treating them as unrelated departments. Specimens can establish the ecology behind a landscape painting, and archival objects can show how development altered habitats, making the museum's broad collection a layered record of one island's cultural and natural transformation.

























