Perot Museum of Nature and Science

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is a natural history and science museum located in Victory Park, Dallas, Texas. The museum sits at the edge of the Dallas Arts District in Victory Park, and the Victory Park campus opened its doors to the public on December 1, 2012. The museum was named in honor of Margot and Ross Perot. Built entirely through private philanthropy, it stands as one of the most architecturally distinctive buildings in Dallas and serves as a major center for science education and public engagement across North Texas.

History and Origins

Even though the Victory Park museum was founded in 2012, its history dates back to 1936 when the Dallas Museum of Natural History opened in Fair Park. That institution, along with The Science Place and The Dallas Children's Museum, merged to create what is now the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

In 2006, a unique merger of these three museums — the Dallas Museum of Natural History, The Science Place, and the Dallas Children's Museum — resulted in a new institution: the Museum of Nature & Science at Fair Park. The newly merged organization quickly set its sights on a purpose-built facility that could consolidate its collections and serve a larger audience.

In January 2008, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne was announced as the designer of the new museum in Victory Park. On May 30 of that year, the five children of Ross and Margot Perot — Katherine Perot Reeves, Carolyn Rathjen, Suzanne McGee, Nancy Perot Mulford, and Ross Perot, Jr. — announced a $50 million gift made in honor of their parents, and the museum would be named the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in their parents' honor.

The $185,000,000 fundraising goal, slated to provide for site acquisition, exhibition planning and design, construction of the new building, education programs, and an endowment, was achieved by November 2011, more than a year before the museum's scheduled opening in December 2012. The donated funds enabled the museum to be built incurring no debt or public funding.

The Perot Museum opened on December 1, 2012, with a ribbon cutting celebration, a performance by BANDALOOP aerialists, confetti cannons, and more. Scores of visitors, the Perot family, the mayor, and museum leadership celebrated a significant day in Dallas history. Approximately 6,000 visitors came to the museum on its first day of operation.

Architecture and Building Design

Designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate Thom Mayne, the Perot Museum's building has been called "the boldest piece of modern architecture to hit Dallas" by the Dallas Morning News. The building uses creative design techniques to create a unique and sustainable Dallas icon.

Designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects, the building was conceived as a large cube floating over a landscaped plinth (or base). Mayne won the commission over architects Ennead, Shigeru Ban, and Snøhetta, though he had not designed a museum before. The building was constructed on a 4.7-acre site at the northwest corner of Woodall Rodgers Freeway and Field Street in Victory Park, just north of downtown Dallas.

The 180,000-square-foot facility has six floors and stands about 14 stories high. Five of the floors are accessible to the public and house 11 permanent exhibit halls as well as six learning labs. The top floor houses the museum's administration offices.

One of the building's most striking exterior features is its glass-enclosed escalator. The building features a 54-foot, continuous-flow escalator contained in a 150-foot, glass-enclosed, tube-like structure that dramatically extends outside the building. Windows at the bottom of the cube make the building appear to float, and the support columns on this level are designed in the shape of a "V" — which was a challenge for the engineers and local contractors who had never attempted this before.

Three design firms — Amaze Design, Paul Bernhard Exhibit Design, and the Science Museum of Minnesota — took over installations for the 11 permanent exhibition halls, focusing on fossils, birds, geology, space exploration, and other topics.

The building incorporates extensive sustainability features. The new building has a rainwater collection system that captures run-off water from the roof and parking lot, satisfying 74% of the museum's non-potable water needs and 100% of its irrigation needs. The building also prioritizes sustainability by utilizing LED lighting, off-grid energy generation technology, and solar-powered water heating. To enhance energy efficiency, the atrium and other spaces within the building benefit from natural sunlight via strategically placed skylights. The building has secured the highest possible 4 Green Globes from the Green Building Initiative, with a rating of an overall 85% on the Green Globes rating scale and 100% for its design and sustainable performance measures.

The architectural design received recognition before the museum even opened. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science was one of 47 new buildings selected out of more than a thousand projects submitted for the American Architecture Awards. The selection was made by a juried panel in Istanbul for the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies.

Permanent Exhibits and Collections

The 180,000-square-foot facility in Victory Park is now recognized as the symbolic gateway to the Dallas Arts District. The museum features 11 permanent exhibit halls on five floors of public space, a children's museum, a state-of-the-art traveling exhibition hall, and The Hoglund Foundation Theater, a National Geographic Experience offering 4K digital projection.

The T. Boone Pickens Life Then and Now Hall allows visitors to gaze up at towering fossil skeletons, uncover the Perot dinosaur, admire ancient fossils from when Dallas was submerged beneath an ocean, and observe museum paleontologists and preparators at work in the Paleo Lab. The museum also has a unique paleontological identity: the Perot Museum offers unique scientific discoveries such as the arctic dinosaur discovered and named by the museum's own paleontologists.

Other highlights include the Dynamic Earth Hall, where visitors can experience the movements and storms of the Earth, including standing on a platform to feel the Earth shake, touch a tornado in a simulator, and report on the weather to become a meteorologist. The Expanding Universe Hall offers a cosmic exploration in which visitors can compare the Sun to other stars and learn how scientists use physics to better understand objects in space.

The Lamar Hunt Family Sports Hall allows visitors to get active and learn the science behind their favorite sports and what it takes to become a professional athlete. The Rose Hall of Birds allows visitors to pilot a red-tailed hawk, craft their own bird at supply stations, explore bird mating behaviors, and trace the evolutionary journey of birds from the age of dinosaurs to the present day.

Designed for children ages five and under, the Moody Family Children's Museum invites little ones to dig for dinosaurs, explore a farmers market and mini Dallas skyline, admire terrarium animals, and create their own works of art.

The 297-seat ADA-compliant theater has a 2D/3D 4K digital projection and sound system and features a variety of films, from educational features and documentaries to experimental independent films. Visitors can also start their experience outdoors: the museum's outdoor Science Park includes a musical forest, leapfrog forest, and splash pond.

Education and Community Outreach

Education is central to the museum's core mission. The museum was built to change the way kids see their futures — a place to help them become the next generation of scientists, robot engineers, mathematicians, technology experts, and beyond.

Museum educators offer 26 programs that can be taught in schools' classrooms, presented to large groups in auditoriums, or showcased as part of after-school programming. The museum can also bring its programs directly to schools, with Perot Museum educators arriving with all the supplies and expertise needed to engage students in exciting and educational programming.

A flagship component of the museum's community outreach is its fleet of mobile science labs. The museum's three TECH Trucks are mobile makerspaces that operate year-round, dedicated to providing interactive STEM-based experiences focused on skills such as creative problem-solving, iterative design, and technological literacy. TECH Trucks bring hands-on discovery directly to under-resourced populations at community centers, libraries, parks, public events, and out-of-school programs, providing science-based experiences for students outside the walls of the museum.

Through TECH Truck and other outreach initiatives, the Perot Museum provides accessible, informal STEM experiences that work to ensure that all members of the community, regardless of their zip code, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, have access to innovative, inspiring STEM activities that will fuel the next generation of scientists, medical workers, and engineers.

The museum has also extended its educational reach digitally. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas developed an online educational series called The Whynauts. The series focuses on STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and math — and the pilot episode drew 40,000 viewers, with a goal of reaching 250,000 kindergarten through eighth-grade students.

The museum hosts thousands of student field trips annually, providing curriculum-aligned programs that supplement classroom learning. Beyond field trips, it offers professional development opportunities for teachers, equipping them with innovative strategies to teach STEM subjects more effectively. During fiscal year 2024, the museum served over one million visitors.

Visitor Information

The museum is located at 2201 N. Field St. in downtown Dallas. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and Wednesday through Saturday. The museum is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays, and is closed on Tuesdays.

General admission costs $25 for adults and $15 for youth ages 2 to 12. Admission to any special exhibits or 3D films costs extra. Tickets can be purchased in advance through the museum's website; however, in order to receive available discounts — such as military or teacher discounts — tickets must be purchased at the museum.

The museum features a Wolfgang Puck Café and an outdoor leapfrog forest to complete a day of exploration. The museum accommodates foot and automobile traffic coming from Victory Park, the American Airlines Center, West End, the Dallas Arts District, the Central Business District, and Uptown. Visitors can access the museum by riding DART light rail trains to Victory Station, by traveling on nearby roads or highways, or by using the Katy Trail pedestrian and bicycle paths.