Portal:Museums

The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying 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. Museums host a much wider range of objects than a library, and they usually focus on a specific theme, such as the arts, science, natural history or local history. Public museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often tourist attractions, and many draw large numbers of visitors from outside of their host country, with the most visited museums in the world 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 Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road.

The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin. The museum is particularly famous for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons and ornate architecture—sometimes dubbed a cathedral of nature—both exemplified by the large Diplodocus cast that dominated the vaulted central hall before it was replaced in 2017 with the skeleton of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling. The Natural History Museum Library contains an extensive collection of books, journals, manuscripts, and artwork linked to the work and research of the scientific departments; access to the library is by appointment only. The museum is recognised as the pre-eminent centre of natural history and research of related fields in the world.

Although commonly referred to as the Natural History Museum, it was officially known as British Museum (Natural History) until 1992, despite legal separation from the British Museum itself in 1963. Originating from collections within the British Museum, the landmark Alfred Waterhouse building was built and opened by 1881 and later incorporated the Geological Museum. The Darwin Centre is a more recent addition, partly designed as a modern facility for storing the valuable collections.

Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom, the Natural History Museum does not charge an admission fee. The museum is an exempt charity and a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The Princess of Wales is a patron of the museum. There are approximately 850 staff at the museum. The two largest strategic groups are the Public Engagement Group and Science Group. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Collections management involves the development, storage, and preservation of cultural property, as well as objects of contemporary culture (including contemporary art, literature, technology, and documents) in museums, libraries, archives and private collections. The primary goal of collections management is to meet the needs of the individual collector or collecting institution's mission statement, while also ensuring the long-term safety and sustainability of the cultural objects within the collector's care. Collections management, which consists primarily of the administrative responsibilities associated with collection development, is closely related to collections care, which is the physical preservation of cultural heritage. The professionals most influenced by collections management include collection managers, registrars, and archivists. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that the Deutsches Romantik-Museum in Frankfurt, the only museum dedicated to the entire era of German Romanticism, looks like three houses and features blue elements?
... that Gracie Mansion became New York City's mayoral residence after serving as a public toilet and a museum?
... that Peckham Rock, a fake cave painting surreptitiously installed in the British Museum by Banksy, is actually concrete from Hackney?
... that the world's oldest timepiece with an anchor escapement is in the collection of the Irish Museum of Time?
... that two railroad boxcars were needed to ship William W. Jefferis's vast mineral collection to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History?
... that one of the buildings that house the Safe House Museum was where Martin Luther King Jr. hid from the Ku Klux Klan on 21 March 1968, just weeks before he was assassinated?

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 1Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 2The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 3Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 4The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 5The British Museum, London
Image 6The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 7Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 8Aerial 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 9The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 10The 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 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 12The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 13A 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 14The 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 15The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 16São 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 17The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 18The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 19Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 20The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 21The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 22Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 23Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 24The 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 25The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 26National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 27Paifang 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 28The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.

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: