Museum Hours
The Puget Sound Museum does not currently host open or visiting hours. All visits to the museum are by appointment only. If you'd like to tour the collection or schedule a visit for your classroom, group, etc. please call or email us to schedule your visit.
During the school year, we are often only able to host tours on Thursdays and Fridays between 10 am and 4 pm due to limited staff availability. That being said, we occasionally accommodate larger group tours or classroom visits on alternate weekdays or weekends as needed. Please note that the museum is closed and does not host tours during UPS school holidays.
Due to space limitations, we do not accept visiting groups larger than 25 people. During the school year, we also request that visiting parties have at least 4 people. This is to ensure that staff time is used wisely and not fully occupied by individual tours.
We offer an assortment of tours here in the museum. If you're looking for a general tour of the collection, these can last between 30 min to an hour. If you're an educator or leader looking to bring in students for additional learning, we can also offer 30 minute nature journaling or bird species ID activities on top of a museum tour. In general, group tours/visits last no longer than 90 minutes. If you have questions about what we can offer your group or classroom, please email us.
Yes! We love hosting artists and supporting their work by providing specimens as reference. We are always happy to schedule a time for individual artists to come into the museum and sketch. We also host monthly Drawing Nights for local artists. To receive info about registration for Drawing Nights, please email us at pugetsoundmuseum@pugetsound.edu and request to be added to our SciArt mailing list.
Puget Sound Museum of Natural History
Thompson Hall, Room 295 (2nd floor)
1500 N. Warner St.
Tacoma, WA 98416
Getting to the Museum
To get to the museum, we recommend setting your map to 1449 N Union Ave Parking which takes you to the parking lot directly south of Thompson Hall. Entrance into the building is best through the southeast doors. From there, you can walk up the stairs to the right to the second floor and follow signs for the museum.
If you’ve parked elsewhere around campus, you may also enter the building through Harned Hall, which is connected to Thompson. The Harned Hall entrance is directly off N Union Ave. To get to the museum through this entrance, continue straight through the atrium under the Grey Whale skeleton and into the courtyard. Once in the courtyard, you will continue straight into Thompson Hall and find yourself directly in front of the museum.
