Portal:Museums

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The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

A museum (/mjuːˈziːəm/ mew-ZEE-əm) is an institution dedicated to displaying and/or preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Compared to a library, a museum hosts a much wider range of objects and usually focus around a specific theme such as the arts, science, natural history, local history, and other topics. Public museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often considered to be tourist attractions, and many museums attract large numbers of visitors from outside their host country, with the most visited museums in the world regularly attracting millions of visitors annually.

Since the establishment of the earliest known museum in ancient times, museums have been associated with academia and the preservation of rare items. Museums originated as private collections of interesting items, and not until much later did the emphasis on educating the public take root. (Full article...)

Selected museum

The Vietnam National Museum of History (Vietnamese: Viện Bảo tàng Lịch sử Việt Nam) is in the Hoan Kiem district of Hanoi, Vietnam. The museum building was an archaeological research institution of the French School of the Far East under French colonial rule (Louis Finot École Française d'Extrême-Orient EFEO) of 1910, was extensively refurbished in 1920. It was redesigned between 1926 and 1932 by architect Ernest Hébrard. The museum was acquired by the government of North Vietnam (now the government of Vietnam) in 1958 and then the artifact collections were expanded to cover eastern arts and national history.

The museum highlights Vietnam's prehistory (about 300,000–400,000 years ago) up to the August 1945 Revolution. It has over 200,000 exhibits displayed covering items from prehistory up to the 1947 revolution and founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, arranged in five major sections. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

Image 1The Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
Image 2The Galerie des Glaces of the Palace of Versailles
Image 3Exhibit in Indonesia Museum, Jakarta, displaying the traditional costumes of Indonesian ethnic groups
Image 4The Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, has the world's largest stained-glass ceiling, designed by Leonard French.
Image 5The South Hall of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia, an aerospace museum, showing the Enola Gay bomber and other aeroplanes
Image 6An early 18th-century German Schrank with a traditional display of corals, from the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin
Image 7Triangular prism-shaped display cases in the Red Dot Design Museum, Essen
Image 8Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, an archaeology and anthropology museum
Image 9The queen's chamber of the Petit Trianon, Versailles, the former residence of Marie Antoinette
Image 10Storage gallery of the Larco Museum, Lima, Peru, a museum of pre-Columbian art
Image 11Display cases in Altena Castle
Image 12The Dinosaur Hall of the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin, showing the skeleton of Giraffatitan brancai, among the largest mounted skeletons in the world
Image 13The Industrial Gallery, housed in the original part of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, designed by Yeoville Thomason and opened in 1885
Image 14Floating Heads by Sophie Cave (2006), installed in the East Court of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
Image 15Entrance hall of the Vienna Technical Museum, one of the largest technology museums in Europe
Image 16The Egyptian Museum, Cairo, showing some of its collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities
Image 17Panoramic view of the library of the Guimet Museum, Paris, an art museum specialising in Asian art
Image 18Old Dutch display case in Branderszaal Lange Haven 97, Schiedam
Image 19A museum in Verkhniye Mandrogi, Leningrad Oblast, specialising in vodka
Image 20Antique cuckoo clocks displayed at Cuckooland Museum, Tabley, an example of a specialised museum
Image 21Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale
Image 22Iron bed in torture room at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh

Selected general article

A museum/library/archival registrar is responsible for implementing policies and procedures that relate to caring for collections of cultural institutions like archives, libraries, and museums. These policies are found in the museum's collections policy, the guiding tenet of the museum explaining why the institution is in operation, dictating the museum's professional standards regarding the objects left in its care. Registrars focus on sections that include acquisitions, loans, exhibitions, deaccessions, storage, packing and shipping, security of objects in transit, insurance policies, and risk management.

As a collections care professional, they work with collection managers, conservators, and curators to balance public access to objects with the conditions needed to maintain preservation. Focusing on documentation, registrars are responsible for developing and maintaining records management systems, with individual files for each object in the collection. Smaller and mid-sized institutions may combine the role of registrar with that of collections manager, while large institutions often have multiple registrars, each overseeing a different curatorial department. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that New York City's Bartow–Pell Mansion became a museum after its operator was restricted from importing and exporting plants?
... that the 1911 benefit game for Addie Joss was an all-star game that included nine members of the Baseball Hall of Fame?
... that while Joseph Longworth thought that he would be remembered only as "the son of his father and the father of his son", there is today a wing of the Cincinnati Art Museum named for him?
... that Kobe and Vanessa Bryant were founding donors of the National Museum of African American History and Culture?
... that Gracie Mansion became New York City's mayoral residence after serving as a public toilet and a museum?
... that the Al Qarara Cultural Museum, housed in a former grain silo, contained 6000 years of history?

Get involved

For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Museums-related articles, see WikiProject Museums.

Selected exterior image

Image 1The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 2The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 3The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 4The Dalí Theatre and Museum, commemorating Salvador Dalí in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia, has a geodesic dome and is decorated with giant eggs.
Image 5The Lower Castle of Ambras Castle, Innsbruck, one of the earliest buildings constructed specifically for use as a museum; it remains a museum displaying its original collections
Image 6Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 7Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 8Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 9Aerial view of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel's Holocaust memorial; the museum, designed by Moshe Safdie, opened in 2005 and tells the personal stories of ninety Holocaust victims and survivors
Image 10Paifang or arched entrance of the Northern Branch of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, whose collection covers 8,000 years of the history of Chinese art
Image 11Small cloister of the charterhouse of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, built on the site of the Baths of Diocletian; part of the National Roman Museum of Rome
Image 12Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 13The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 14São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo, a 1968 concrete-and-glass structure designed by Lina Bo Bardi, considered a landmark of the city and a major example of modern Brazilian architecture
Image 15A maritime museum located in the village of Bolungarvík, Vestfirðir, Iceland, showing a 19th-century fishing base with a typical boat of the period and associated industrial buildings: an example of a very small museum
Image 16The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 17The British Museum, London
Image 18The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 19The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 20The Louvre, Paris, showing the glass-and-metal Pyramid, designed by I. M. Pei to act as the museum's main entrance, and completed in 1989
Image 21Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 22National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 23The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 24The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 25The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 26The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 27The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 28Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture

Selected type of museum

A computer museum is devoted to the study of historic computer hardware and software, where a "museum" is a "permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates, and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment, for the purposes of education, study, and enjoyment", as defined by the International Council of Museums.

Some computer museums exist within larger institutions, such as the Science Museum in London, United Kingdom; and the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. Others are dedicated specifically to computing, such as:

the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, United States.
the American Computer & Robotics Museum in Bozeman, Montana, United States.
The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, United Kingdom.
The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, United Kingdom
the Nexon Computer Museum in Jeju Province. South Korea. (Full article...)

In the news

12 May 2024 –: Forty-nine Vatican Museums employees start an unprecedented labor dispute over unfair and poor working conditions against the Vatican's Pontifical Commission. (Reuters)
6 May 2024 –: The 2024 Met Gala takes place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with the theme "The Garden of Time", celebrating the Met's exhibit Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. (Vanity Fair)