Exhibitions

Enjoy the birds and wildlife, plants, geology, and cultural richness that make the California Central Coast unique in the world. The best place to enjoy the outside, inside.


Permanent Exhibitions

The Amazing Adaptation of Birds

Belted Kingfisher from Museum Collection

Monterey County is one of the top five places in North America for bird watching due to its diverse number of resident and migratory birds. The Museum's Birds of Monterey County exhibition features 291 bird species and 409 life mounted birds. Highlights include a California condor, 117 Rollo Beck life-mounted birds.

Monarch Gallery

Explore the miraculous and unique annual cycle of western monarch butterflies, which includes a winter migration to California’s Central Coast. Highlights of this exhibition include real specimens, amazing videos, vintage artifacts, and multiple hands-on opportunities--all wrapped in the most up-to-date scientific knowledge and artistic presentation. Visit our monarch webpage to learn how to see the monarchs during winter.

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Biodiversity Gallery

Various butterfly species from the Museum’s collection

Our Mediterranean weather, ocean currents, and geological formations result in a great abundance and variety of local animals and plants. The Museum has been showcasing this biodiversity for over 130 years.

Discover the beauty of nature seen up close in authentic dioramas and hands-on interactives. Topics include predators and prey, animal coloration, and the reptiles, amphibians, and mammals native to Monterey County.

Our taxidermy collection was largely collected for scientific study in the late 1800s to early 1900s when lack of good binoculars and viewing scopes made taxidermy specimens an essential element of science. Now they serve as a record of the region's biodiversity.

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Geology

Artist Don Wobber and the jade boulder, Leucothea

Artist Don Wobber and the jade boulder, Leucothea

Entering the Museum's Native Plant Garden you are greeted by a 2400 lb. Jade boulder hoisted from the bottom of the ocean in Big Sur by artist Don Wobber. The Museum's Main Gallery also contains a display on jade, Monterey County geology, paleontology, and mineralogy, with an enclosed viewing window devoted to fluorescent minerals.

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Native Plant Garden

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The Museum's Native Plant Garden features three spaces that reflect the area’s important local ecosystems – coastal scrub, chaparral and oak woodland – as well as a butterfly garden and an ethno-botanical area featuring plants that local California Indians used for food and utility. Use our Plant List to find drought resistant native plants for your garden. Kids enjoy digging in the garden fossil pit and bringing home one of its fossils.

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Pacific Grove's Chinese Fishing Village

This exhibition tells the story of the residents of the Point Alones Chinese Fishing Village. The first to immigrate from China as families, these residents were forced out of their homes in 1906 when their prosperous fishing village was purposefully burned down. Having started one of California's largest fisheries, the villagers  significantly contributed to California's natural history and economic development. Historic photographs from the Museum's Collection tell their story.
Learn more about Pacific Grove's Chinese Fishing Village.

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Native Central Coast Baskets

The Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History's “Asking the Baskets” exhibit showcases rare and historic California Indian baskets from the Central Coast.

Along with the historic baskets, the exhibit displays native plants collected and processed by contemporary Ohlone basket weaver Linda Yamane. It also shows a short video of her work, collecting and processing basketry plants for weaving a ceremonial basket. The exhibit includes large-scale models of coiling and twining techniques, and a hands-on station for visitors to weave strands in and out of wooden “basket” spokes.

See 3-D renderings of three baskets here.

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Changes of Monterey County

“This exhibition explores the changing landscapes of Monterey County through memory and data, through what we remember and what we record. How have habitats changed? How might they continue to change? What can we do to protect this place we all share?”

EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS

COASTAL HABITATS

MOUNTAIN HABITATS

VALLEY HABITATS

CHANGE IN ACTION

Collectors: Teaching throughout time

This new exhibit spotlights a variety of amazing collections, from shells to weapons and beyond, brought from the Museum's fascinating basement treasures. See arrowheads, historic photographs, Ed Ricketts collection items, and much more. This exhibit will rotate periodically, trading exhibit material with rarely seen material from the Museum's vast collection.

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Annual Exhibitions

Illustrating Nature

Each year the Museum partners with the prestigious Science Illustration Program at CSUMB Extended Education to present art in the service of science. View artwork by the program's graduating students, who are sought after by scientific institutions and publications around the world.

This six-week exhibition begins Friday, May 6th, and runs until June 11, 2022.

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At The Museum

Environmental Art

Artist Don Wobber and the jade boulder, Leucothea

Artist Don Wobber and the jade boulder, Leucothea

Artist Don Wobber found this 2,400 pound jade boulder decades ago on the bottom of the ocean off of Jade Cove in Big Sur when jade harvesting was still legal. Today you can find it in the Museum garden. Please note that currently Big Sur's Jade Cove is located in the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary and thus protected.

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School Field Trips tend to start and end with Sandy the whale.

School Field Trips tend to start and end with Sandy the whale.

Artist Larry Foster created the beloved Sandy the Gray Whale who welcomes us all to the Museum. Sandy is an actual life-sized model of a female Gray whale and has been a local favorite since the 1980s.

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Fun to watch on a windy day

Fun to watch on a windy day

This kinetic wind sculpture located in the Museum's Native Plant Garden was created by artist Lyman Whitaker.

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The Monarchs Come Home special exhibition grew so popular we created a permanent Monarch Gallery to tell the miraculous story of the monarchs migration to the California Central Coast.

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