[3]The museum was established by a state legislative mandate in 1872 to collect, preserve, prepare, display, and interpret Minnesota's diverse animal and plant life for scholarly research, teaching, public appreciation, enrichment, and enjoyment.

[4] The museum was reorganized by physician and ornithologist Thomas Sadler Roberts with the help of his friend James Ford Bell, who covered half the cost ($150,000) for a new building to house nature dioramas.

The agreement allowed the university to borrow $51.5 million for the project and the state would pay the debt service on the bonds over a span of 25 years.

The museum is on the Saint Paul campus of the University of Minnesota at 2088 Larpenteur Ave W, Falcon Heights, MN[7] New enhancements include an outdoor learning landscape, a dedicated parking lot, and new permanent and temporary exhibit galleries.

[8] In 2016, the museum launched the Minnesota Biodiversity Atlas, an online, searchable interface integrating over 5 terabytes of data from the Bell Museum on birds, mammals, fishes, plants, and fungi to enhance research capacity to perform a range of activities from biological surveys to conservation planning.

Public Education Coordinator Richard Barthelemy realized visitors wanted to get their hands on specimen that are traditionally behind glass in museums.

He teamed with Dr. Roger Johnson from the University of Minnesota's Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education to create hands-on programming.

Shortly after Touch and See opened, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. visited the Bell and then launched their discovery room.

The Touch and See Room today still features bones, furs, and feathers, but it also includes live specimens of snakes, frogs, geckos, cockroaches, and tarantulas.

Visitors can get a ground floor and canopy view of the mini rainforest and learn about related University of Minnesota research.

Museum staff lead audiences on a virtual voyage from the surface of the Earth to the edge of the known universe in an intimate environment, holding up to 30 people per show.

With these exhibitions, the Bell seeks to instill a greater appreciation of our natural world and promote a better understanding of contemporary ecological issues.