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

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 museum director Alena Aladava rebuilt the Belarusian national art collection in the aftermath of the Second World War?
... that a pair of sealskin-covered high heels by Inuk designer Nicole Camphaug are held in the Bata Shoe Museum of Toronto?
... that State Auto Mutual's life-size nativity scene was donated to the Museum of Catholic Art and History in 2023 for display at St. Joseph Cathedral?
... that Hasanpaşa Gasworks escaped its demolition through the resistance of local residents, became a festival venue for a time and was finally transformed into a museum after redevelopment?
... that the Springfield Science Museum is home to the oldest operating projection planetarium in the United States?
... that curator Nina Tonga is the first Pasifika person to be a contemporary art curator at Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand?

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 1National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 2The 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 3Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 4The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 5The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 6The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 7The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 8The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 9Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 10The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 11Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
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 13The 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 14Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
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 16Small 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 17The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 18The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 19Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 20Paifang 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 21The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 22The 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 23The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 24São 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 25Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 26The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 27The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 28The British Museum, London

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: