Museum Facts

The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum

The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum is located on a ninety-acre site on the West Campus of Texas A&M University. The Library and Museum is situated on a plaza adjoining the Presidential Conference Center and the Texas A&M Academic Center. It operates under the administration of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) under the provisions of the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955.

Fact Sheet

• The museum is open seven days a week with the exception of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. Hours are Monday - Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m.
• Admission is $7.00 for adults; senior citizens and active/retired military is $6.00; groups of 20 or more with advanced reservations are $5.00, children 6-17 years old are $3.00, children under 6 are and Texas A&M and Blinn students with a valid ID are free, all other college students are $3.00.
• The museum now features state-of-the-art audio guides featuring the voices of George and Barbara Bush as well as their Daughter Doro Bush Koch. The guides are available in English and Spanish, and an audio descriptive version is available for visitors who are visually impaired. The cost to rent an audio guide is $3.00.
• The museum recently completed an $8.3 million renovation to the main exhibit on the life of George Bush. With the renovation the museum video content has increased 10-fold and the latest in touch screen and interactive technology has been implemented.
• The library and museum is a 21,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the preservation, research, and exhibition of official records, personal papers, and memorabilia of George H. W. Bush. Included are the main gallery space dedicated to The Life and Times of George Bush and a changing exhibit gallery. The first exhibit in this space documented the life of President and Mrs. Bush since the White House, with memorabilia that included the parachute used in his 1997 jump with the Golden Knights in Arizona. Other exhibits that have been features were: Flexing the Nation's Muscle; The Longest Winter: Berlin and the Cold War; Christmas in the White House; Barbara Bush: An Extraordinary Journey; Trains: Tracks of the Iron Horse and The White House in Miniature.
• The library and museum is part of the George Bush Presidential Library Center which is also home to the prestigious Bush School of Government and Public Service and the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation.
• The library and museum contains 43 million pages of documents, one million photographs, thousands of sound and video recordings, and other volumes of information documenting the life and career of President George H.W. Bush.
• The museum collection holdings contain more than 90,000 artifacts ranging from a White House dog house for Millie, to solid gold palm trees, to the Kuwaiti Door located in our Gulf War exhibit. The museum collections also include over 3,000 of the gifts from the foreign heads of state that George Bush received as president and many of the gifts that he received as vice president.
• Included in the library and museum's documents are all of George Bush's vice presidential and presidential records, as well as scores of personal papers from his public service career as a U.S. Congressman, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, China, and Director of Central Intelligence.
• The library and museum opened to the public on November 7, 1997. The library's research room opened January 20, 1998, according to Presidential Records Act guidelines. The research room is open Monday - Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., except federal holidays.
• Included in the museum's main exhibit are items ranging from a 1925 film of George H. W. Bush's first steps in Kennebunkport, Maine, documents that highlight his service at the CIA and United Nations, and records and correspondence from his tenure as the 41st President of the United States of America. Other areas of the gallery include a TBM Avenger aircraft, a 1947 Studebaker, ordinance from Operation Desert Storm, a segment of the Berlin Wall, replicas of President Bush's Camp David Office, Oval Office and White House Press Room, as well as numerous foreign and domestic gifts.
• Of special significance is a classroom, the first of its kind in the Presidential Libraries network. The classroom may be used by student groups as a computer learning lab or as a traditional classroom.

To contact the library and museum, call (979) 691-4000 or visit on the web at http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu.