 The campus is home to several museums containing exhibits from many different fields of study . BYU 's Museum of Art , for example , is one of the largest and most attended art museums in the Mountain West . This Museum aids in academic pursuits of students at BYU via research and study of the artworks in its collection . The Museum is also open to the general public and provides educational programming . The Museum of Peoples and Cultures is a museum of archaeology and ethnology . It focuses on native cultures and artifacts of the Great Basin , American Southwest , Mesoamerica , Peru , and Polynesia . Home to more than 40 @,@ 000 artifacts and 50 @,@ 000 photographs , it documents BYU 's archaeological research . The BYU Museum of Paleontology was built in 1976 to display the many fossils found by BYU 's Dr. James A. Jensen . It holds many artifacts from the Jurassic Period ( 210 @-@ 140 million years ago ) , and is one of the top five collections in the world of fossils from that time period . It has been featured in magazines , newspapers , and on television internationally . The museum receives about 25 @,@ 000 visitors every year . The Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum was formed in 1978 . It features several forms of plant and animal life on display and available for research by students and scholars . 
