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

National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

The National Palace Museum, also known as Taipei Palace Museum, is a national museum headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in Beijing in 1925, the museum was re-established in Shilin, Taipei, in 1965, later expanded with a southern branch in Taibao, Chiayi, in 2015.

The museum holds a permanent collection of nearly 700,000 pieces of artifacts and artworks, primarily comprising items relocated from the Beijing Palace Museum and other institutions in the mainland China during the government of the Republic of China's retreat to Taiwan. Before the re-establishment of the museum in Shilin in 1965, these collections were temporarily housed in various locations across Taiwan.

Spanning 8,000 years of history from the Neolithic to the modern era, the museum's collection reflects a comprehensive record of Chinese history. Like the Palace Museum in Beijing, the museum's extensive array of artifacts and artworks were based on the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties in the Forbidden City. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

National Bureau of Standards preserving the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1951

In conservation, library and archival science, preservation is a set of preventive conservation activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record, book, or object while making as few changes as possible. Preservation activities vary widely and may include monitoring the condition of items, maintaining the temperature and humidity in collection storage areas, writing a plan in case of emergencies, digitizing items, writing relevant metadata, and increasing accessibility. Preservation, in this definition, is practiced in a library or an archive by a conservator, librarian, archivist, or other professional when they perceive a collection or record is in need of maintenance.

Preservation should be distinguished from interventive conservation and restoration, which refers to the treatment and repair of individual items to slow the process of decay, or restore them to a usable state. "Preventive conservation" is used interchangeably with "preservation". (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that the FBI set up temporary offices in a museum on an aircraft carrier while investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
... that Peckham Rock, a fake cave painting surreptitiously installed in the British Museum by Banksy, is actually concrete from Hackney?
... that during its run of screenings at the Whitney Museum, the 1979 film Asparagus was shown rear-projected onto a set that appears in the film itself?
... that during the Panic of 1907, the presidents of New York City's banks and trust companies were locked in the Pierpont Morgan Library?
... that the American Pigeon Museum & Library keeps a flock of hundreds of pigeons for public viewing?
... that the Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust in Madrid was the first Holocaust memorial in Spain when it opened in 2007?

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 Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 2The 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 3A 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 4Small 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 5The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 6São 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 7The 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 8The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 9The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 10The 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 11The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 12Aerial 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 13Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 14Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 15The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 16The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 17The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 18Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 19Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 20The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 21The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 22Paifang 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 23Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 24The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 25The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 26The British Museum, London
Image 27Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 28National Museum, Szczecin, Poland

Selected type of museum

An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned with visual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry, performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections. (Full article...)