Collections Resource Center Collections Resource Center (CRC) In
2005, the 186,000 square foot Collections Resource Center was
opened as a new facility for the storage of the Museum’s vast
collections. This new state-of-the-art facility was built on
site, located below ground level and just south of the Museum’s
historic building. It united many of the Museum’s diverse
collections in a single place to provide extra space for larger
anthropological and geological items and spark-proof storage for
our many zoological specimens that are stored in alcohol. The
facility also provided vast new wet lab space, cryogenic storage
for botanical and zoological DNA and tissue samples, and
dedicated x-ray and histology labs. The Field Museum houses a
collection of more than 24 million specimens and objects.
Through our extensive research program, this number continues to
grow by roughly 200,000 specimens and objects per year. While
the Museum’s historic building has over one million square feet
of floor space, collections