be hosted at a new site. The proposal ultimately did not materialize. In 2014, the museum made another push for a new facility, asking the Washington State Legislature for half the $95 million needed to construct a 110,000 square-foot facility to replace its current building. The new Burke Museum building finished construction in 2018, and the old building closed at the end of the year to transfer the collection's 16 million items before its demolition in April 2019. The new museum cost $106 million to construct and opened to the public on October 12, 2019. The new building, designed by UW alum Tom Kundig, features large windows into research areas to showcase parts of the collection that were not previously exhibited. A garden with 60 species of Washington-native plants will be planted around the new building and its adjacent courtyard, designed to host small events. The new museum also has a small cafe, Off the Rez, that serves Native American cuisine. Collections The museum houses more than 16 million artifacts and specimens in its anthropology, biology, and geology research divisions. According to the museum, its ornithology division includes the largest collection of spread bird wings in the world, while the museum's collection of frozen bird tissues is the world's second largest. The Mammalogy Collection, which is managed by University of Washington professor and Burke Museum curator Sharlene Santana, contains more than 55,000 mammal specimens, and is regarded as the 10th largest collection of mammals in a North American university. The museum states that its collection of Northwest Coast ethnographic material is the fifth largest collection of Native American art in the world, numbering 10,000 objects, among which are "the important early Swan, Eells, Emmons, and Waters collections, as well as the unmatched Blackman-Hall and Ottenberg contemporary silkscreen print collections, and the Steinman contemporary Northwest Coast sculpture collection." The museum's Northwest Coast image research database includes "the Holm/Wright collection of images of Northwest Coast art from 200 museums and private collections, the Harris collection of Northwest Coast silver jewelry images, and de Menil photographs of Northwest Coast totem poles, as well as the George MacDonald Archive of historical Northwest Coast photographs." Exhibits Past long-term exhibits Prior to its temporary closure in 2018, the museum displayed three long-term exhibits: "Life and Times of Washington State," "Pacific Voices," and "Treasures of the Burke." "Life and Times of Washington State" was a natural history