Picture a cabinet of curiosities assembled in 1862, the seed of this museum's collection. Inside, the museum houses exhibits on the science, art, culture, and history of Indiana from prehistoric times to the present day. Its story began in 1862 when State Librarian R. Deloss Brown assembled a cabinet of curiosities that became the original collection.
In 1869 the Indiana General Assembly enacted a law "for the collection and preservation of a Geological and Mineralogical Cabinet of the Natural History of this State. The collection was placed under the Department of Geology and Natural Science and assigned to a state geologist, hired on a two-year term to survey, organize, and label what had been gathered. Over the years the holdings grew mostly unchecked: natural history material expanded and miscellaneous cultural items, many relating to the recent Civil War, were folded in, forming an entirely new category of collections.
For decades visitors viewed these objects on the third floor of the Statehouse until 1919, when the collection was moved to the basement to make room for the Indiana Department of Conservation. Picture those curiosities moving from the Statehouse's third floor down to the basement in 1919, now settled here in downtown Indianapolis.