The mission of the McClung Museum of Natural History & Culture is to advance understanding and appreciation of the earth and its peoples through the collection, preservation, study, interpretation, and exhibition of objects and data. As a part of the University of Tennessee, the McClung Museum works to support academic programs and provide educational programming.
It was a pretty cool museum. Exhibits in order of what I thought was coolest; art from around the world, geology history, ancient Egypt, human origins, mussels exhibit, native peoples exhibit. Get a parking pass at the parking information center then park and go on in. Restrooms, but no wifi. Also, half of the native was taken down due to 'Removed for repatriation'.
I visited McClung on an assignment for college. It is a very interesting museum with multiple different exhibits. It is completely free but donations are accepted. The only downfall is the placement on The University of Tennessee's campus. It was a little difficult finding how to actually get to the building. GPS was NOT helpful. I ended up having to ask a student for directions. All in all, I definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in the natural history of the Earth and/or Tennessee!
Very informative. Excellent collection! Wide variety from Earth history to evolution and even modern art. It is free and on the UT campus. We had a very hard time finding it using Google maps and the street address, but just asking a couple of the kiddos pointed us in the right direction. Please feel free to donate once you get there, they need some signs. It was very hard to find hahaha!
First off, go to the website so receive your free admission to the museum. You can't enter it unless you have valid tickets. Now ok... I get that this museum is to preserve history we all understand this concept. But what I don't get is that more than half of the Native American artifacts in this section was removed by Tribes because it was viewed "incorrectly." Instead of having a Tribe member being in the museum to inform people they just removed the artifacts entirely from public eye. How I would do it, inform and educate rather than take down things. Just very odd to me. The bottom half of the museum (after you walk down the stairs) is interesting although the theory that we came from "apes" is uh... A different topic. It's a nice sized museum, very clean, quiet and people are respectfully when going into each section. P.S, if a Baseball game is nearby and they charge for parking let them know that you're visiting the museum not the game so you can get in to park. If not, you'll get charged $20 to park for free. It's far better than the Knoxville Museum of Art, now that's a different story to tell.
For an entirely free exhibit it is fairly excellent. Some of the displays seem to change out from time to time based on what I've seen in some of the photos, and of course some of the exhibits feature replicas however it still represents a very good idea of what the original one was like (actually I tend to think it's best that museums don't place the original artifact on display) which is normally at a much larger museum. This museum can be walked through quickly though I advise taking in the detail for a decent 2 hours (I walked in forgetting the hour was moved ahead though still managed to compose decent photographs, which is what I intended to do.)