[8] In 1986, it was decided that the institution should become a public museum, and a new building was designed by the Dutch architect Fons Verheijen.

The building's reception area incorporated the 1657-1661 Pesthuis, designed by Huybert Corneliszoon van Duyvenvlucht.

[6] Naturalis has partnered with ETI Bioinformatics in support of the Catalog of Life (CoL), and is working with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Prior to the merger with the Zoölogisch Museum Amsterdam and National Herbarium of the Netherlands, there were approximately 10 million zoological and geological specimens in the Naturalis collection.

Some parts of the collections are stored in a depot in the former museum building at the Raamsteeg in the city center of Leiden.

The visitor can move freely through the exhibitions with information and short videos available in Dutch or English to add context to some of the museum's highlights.

In 2012-2016, in addition to the usual systematic work, the institute investigates the following themes: character evolution, interactions between species and dynamic biodiversity.

In ARISE, Naturalis is working on the largest research project in its history: an infrastructure to know and recognize all Dutch species.