Joel A. Bartsch has worked as a curator at various museums and accrued four decades of senior management experience. In 2021, Joel Bartsch serves as president of the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Before becoming president, he served the museum in many other capacities.
The Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS) is a natural history museum located in Houston, Texas, founded in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Society. The museum amassed a collection thanks to Sigmund J. Westheimer in 1922. By 1943, HMNS’s collection consisted of 17,000 items. In 1946, the Museum of Natural History of Houston, a private corporation, was created to maintain and operate the museum. Ten years later, it received a ninety-year lease from the city for its current location, a parcel of land on the northern border of Hermann Park.
Museum attendance continues to grow. It reached more than one million in 1990. By 2006, HMNS was recording more than two million visitors annually.
