Portal:Museums

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The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

A museum 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. Museums host a much wider range of objects than a library, and 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 attract large numbers of visitors from outside 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 West Building facade of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.

The Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope, which is linked underground to the modernist East Building, designed by I. M. Pei, and is next to the 6.1-acre (25,000 m²) Sculpture Garden. The Gallery often presents temporary special exhibitions spanning the world and the history of art. It is one of the largest museums in North America. Attendance rose to nearly 3.3 million visitors in 2022, making it first among U.S. art museums, and third on the list of most-visited museums in the United States. Of the top three art museums in the United States by annual visitors, it is the only one that has no admission fee. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Heritage science is the interdisciplinary domain of scientific study of cultural and natural heritage. Heritage science draws on diverse humanities, sciences and engineering disciplines. It focuses on enhancing the understanding, care and sustainable use of heritage so it can enrich people's lives, both today and in the future. Heritage science is an umbrella term encompassing all forms of scientific enquiry into human works and the combined works of nature and humans, of value to people.

The above definition was developed though a community consultation organised by ICCROM and the European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science in 2019. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that Ukrainian museum director Horpyna Vatchenko forced the Hermitage Museum to abide by its agreement and return the Kernosovskiy idol after a loan?
... that the Seabury Tredwell House, now a museum, is Manhattan's only remaining 19th-century house with its original furnishings?
... that the site of the headquarters of the German colonization of Texas was converted into a museum?
... that the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia is the only contemporary art museum in the country with a permanent collection?
... 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 conservator Carolyn Price Horton helped to direct a "Mud Angel army" that rescued books after the Arno flooded museums and libraries in Florence, Italy, in 1966?

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

Selected type of museum

A virtual museum is a digital entity that draws on the characteristics of a museum, in order to complement, enhance, or augment the museum experience through personalization, interactivity, and richness of content. Virtual museums can perform as the digital footprint of a physical museum, or can act independently, while maintaining the authoritative status as bestowed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in its definition of a museum. In tandem with the ICOM mission of a physical museum, the virtual museum is also committed to public access; to both the knowledge systems embedded in the collections and the systematic, and coherent organization of their display, as well as to their long-term preservation. As with a traditional museum, a virtual museum can be designed around specific objects (such as an art museum or a natural history museum), or can consist of online exhibitions created from primary or secondary resources (as, for example in a science museum). Moreover, a virtual museum can refer to the mobile or World Wide Web offerings of traditional museums (e.g., displaying digital representations of its collections or exhibits); or can be born digital content such as, 3D environments, net art, virtual reality and digital art. Often, discussed in conjunction with other cultural institutions, a museum by definition, is essentially separate from its sister institutions such as a library or an archive. Virtual museums are usually, but not exclusively delivered electronically when they are denoted as online museums, hypermuseum, digital museum, cybermuseums or web museums. (Full article...)