Museo de Historia Natural de Concepcion

The founder of the Natural History Museum of Concepción, was the British naturalist Edwin Reed Brookman (1841), who from a young age was already honorary secretary of the Entomological Society and assistant to the Museum of Natural Sciences of Bristol.

He arrived in Chile in 1869, hired by the Natural History Museum, focusing on classifying the national flora and fauna with Rodulfo Phillippi. Finally he stayed in Chile, helping to cement the birth of the Valparaíso Museum, later the Museum of the Banos de Cauquenes, and finally the Concepción Museum, which opened in September 1902, being its first Director.

It had the taxidermist assistant Gabriel Castillo, incorporating specimens of regional fauna into the museum, also attaching exotic specimens.

Upon his death in 1910, Carlos Oliver Schneider, a Uruguayan national student, recently graduated from the Liceo de Hombres de Concepción, took over the collections deposited in custody at that educational establishment. He continued with the museum for 40 years. He introduced new collections in the areas of paleontology, archeology, ethnography, and history, endowing him with a publication: "Communications".

He had the enthusiastic support of the community, teaching at the Liceo de Hombres and Universidad de Concepción, which attracted the recognition of the government through the Order of Merit in the rank of Commander. As a last activity he toured part of Aysén and the Chilean Antarctic, always collecting species for the museum. He passed away in June 1949.

Since its foundation, the Natural History Museum of Concepción, due to the lack of its own premises, had to go through long stages of uncertainties, reaching 21 different locations in its history, drawing two major earthquakes: 1939 and 1960.

In 1929 it became part of the Directorate of Libraries, Archives and Museums (Dibam).

Thanks to the modernization plan undertaken for the regional museums, it was reopened in May 2003. It currently has an adequate and modern building; Many of its old collections are preserved in it, which have been an important contribution to the new exhibition. Since 2018, with the launch of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, it is part of the National Service of Cultural Heritage, formerly the Dibam.

As a complement to this assembly, they have provided pieces from the Stom Museums in Chiguayante, O'Higginiano and the Fine Arts in Talca, and the Mapuche in Cañete. Others have been obtained through research projects led by the Museum itself.