South African Cultural History Museum
The South African Cultural History Museum has an interesting beginning as a strictly Governmental Museum. The Government of the South African Republic (ZAR) founded the Straats Museum and intended to use it to provided natural history collections and exhibitions, archaeological, anthropological and historical information. The Museum was situated on Market Square, better known today as Strijdom Square, in a small market hall in Pretoria. Once the hall became too small to accommodate everyone it was moved to Boom Street, Pretoria. This was only done once the building was completed after the Anglo-Boer War. On the 15th of December 1904 it was opened as Pretoria Museum and later changed to Transvaal Museum.
Again the museum became too small, so in 1912 some of the collection was moved to Paul Kruger Street where a new building had been completed. Only in 1925 did the rest of the collection make its journey to this building. Even with the move the Museum on Boom Street remained a landmark, containing only the historical, anthropological and archaeological collections.
With the founding of the National Cultural History and Open Air Museum, in 1964, complete separation between the cultural and natural history sections could be made. In 1988 the name was shortened to National Cultural History Museum (NCHM). The NCHM head office managed many satellite museums such as Kruger, Voortrekker Monument, Sammy Marks, Coert Steynberg, Pierneef and Pioneer Museums and the Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum. The first enviro museum, in South Africa, to be developed in north of Pretoria, was Tswaing Crater Museum.
As the old building in Boom Street became increasingly more dilapidated, NCHM tried, over thirty years, to find another site that could act as a functional Museum. At one point the building had to be evacuated due to a water pipe bursting. This unfortunate incidence resulted in much damage to objects on display. In 1993 the new Museum of culture was moved to the old Mint building in Visagie Street, in Pretoria. The building originally designed for a mint was adapted well as a Museum, providing practical areas for exhibitions, storage and communication. On the 1 March 1997 the Museum was officially opened.
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