section_path: History
section_name: History
paragraph_text: History
  
  The museum was founded by the King's Commissioner of Drenthe on 28 November 1854 as the Provincial Museum of Drents Antiquities.
  
  On 6 November 2007, the museum announced that architect Erick van Egeraat was chosen to design a new extension for the museum. Total costs were estimated at eighteen million euros. The museum was closed from the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2011. At the beginning of 2010, a new modern depot facility for approximately 90,000 objects and works of art was completed. The new wing was opened officially in November 2011.
  
  The museum conducted a CT scan and endoscopy of a statue of Buddha that documented the presence of a mummy identified as that of a monk, Liuquan, a Buddhist master of the Chinese Medical School. The statue is reported to date to the 11th or 12th century. The mummy was put on display at the Hungarian Natural History Museum through May 2015.