Ahead of you, near Old Town Albuquerque, rises the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, a public revenue facility of the state's Department of Cultural Affairs. The museum was created by an act of the New Mexico Legislature signed into law by Governor Bruce King in March 1980 and opened on January 11, 1986 after ground was broken on a 4.8-acre (1.9 ha) site. It was founded in 1986 to give New Mexico’s many dinosaur fossils a home rather than send them out of state, and it was one of the first new natural history museums in the U.S. in decades.
Inside, the founders favored an updated approach — interactive multimedia exhibits instead of rows of specimens behind glass — a design choice you can still feel in the galleries. In 1999 an astronomy center including an observatory and planetarium was added; that center had been operated separately by the University of New Mexico before merging into the Museum of Natural History and Science in 2007. Stand here and imagine those fossils and the multimedia displays brought together on this 4.8-acre site.
Notice the observatory and planetarium perched atop the museum, holding the astronomy center that joined this building in 2007.