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Animal Crossing New Horizons > Animal Crossing New Horizons Getting the Museum - ACNH Museum
Animal Crossing New Horizons Museum
In Animal Crossing games, the museum is a building that displays all the treasures you've come across in your town. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the museum specifically displays fossils, bugs, and fish. As you collect these items, you can donate one of each to the museum to put on display.
Unlike previous entries in the series, the museum won't be on your island at the start of the game. Instead, you'll need to entice its curator Blathers, to build a museum on your island. This guide covers how to unlock the museum in Animal Crossing New Horizons.
Giving Tom Nook Bugs and Fish
The first step to getting a museum built is to start gathering donations for the building. You can start to do this as soon as you get the DIY recipes for a fishing rod and net after your first day on the island. You'll then need to use these to catch five unique bugs or fish (or a mix of both). Bring these to Tom Nook in the Resident Services tent and he'll send them off to his buddy Blathers.
Pick a spot for the Museum
After donating five critters, Tom Nook will get a call from Blathers suggesting that he wants to build a museum on your island. Nook will give you a kit to pick out a spot for the museum. The location is entirely up to you, and it can be moved later for a price of 50,000 bells. Simply take the kit to a spot of your choosing and it will be reserved for the museum.
Donating to Blathers
The next day after picking a spot, Blathers will arrive in a tent at that location. You can enter it and meet him. At this point, he has the ability to assess fossils, one of his trademark skills. To go from a tent to a museum proper, you'll need to donate 15 additional items to Blathers. These can be any combination of 15 unique fossils, fish, or bugs.
Museum
After making these donations, the museum proper will go under construction. It'll be two full days before it's opened. Once it is, it functions like the museum in other Animal Crossing games. You can continue to donate unique fossils, bugs, and fish to the museum until you've discovered and donated every one in the game. To make things easier, you can also check which fish and bugs you've donated using the Critterpedia on your Nook Phone.
Check out our fish, bug, and sea creatures guides for help finding all of these unique animals.
The museum display in New Horizons is by far the grandest it's ever been. There are several rooms for each section, each with a unique design that gives it a modern museum feel. Gone are the days of square rooms with evenly laid out displays. Enjoy your museum and watch it grow as you discover all the treasures on your island!
Art Gallery
As of the version 1.2.0 update in April 2020, another section has been added to the museum. It's an Art Gallery on the top floor of the museum. There will be 43 pieces of art to find and donate to the museum. To get this wing of the museum, simply speak to Blathers and the new section will be open after a day of renovations.
To collect art, you'll need to purchase it from Jolly Redd. You'll first find him on the day of the museum upgrade wandering around your town. You'll get a random piece of genuine art from him. From then on, he'll randomly show up with his boat on the northernmost beach of your island. On the days he is there, you can purchase art from him. Most of his art is fake and can't be donated to the museum, but he also sells genuine art that is distinguishable based on flaws on the fakes that aren't present in the original.
Thank you for using our Animal Crossing New Horizons Museum guide.
