Hokkaido University Museum

About

The Hokkaido University Museum, on the university's Sapporo campus, received approval for establishment from the Ministry of Education in 1999. Its first-phase construction renovated about 3,000 square meters and opened to the public in 2001, occupying part of the former Faculty of Science main building, a structure completed in 1930 with a total floor area of about 9,000 square meters. The museum closed in April 2015 for seismic retrofitting and interior renovation, then reopened in 2016 to mark the university's 140th anniversary, with exhibition space roughly doubled by the renovation. Academic specimens and materials accumulated across the university since its Sapporo Agricultural College era now total about four million items, of which roughly three million are held by the museum itself. In addition to the main building on the Sapporo campus, the museum also comprises the Sapporo Agricultural College Second Farm and the Fisheries Sciences Building on the Hakodate campus.