Portal:Museums

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Museums Portal

Map of museums all over the world (interactive version)

A museum (/mjuːˈziːəm/ mew-ZEE-əm; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these items available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. The largest museums are located in major cities throughout the world, while thousands of local museums exist in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. Museums have varying aims, ranging from the conservation and documentation of their collection, serving researchers and specialists to catering to the general public. The goal of serving researchers is not only scientific, but intended to serve the general public.

There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, and children's museums. According to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries. (Full article...)

Selected museum

Shaanxi History Museum, which is located to the northwest of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda in the ancient city Xi'an, in the Shaanxi province of China, is one of the first huge state museums with modern facilities in China and one of the largest. The museum houses over 370,000 items, including murals, paintings, pottery, coins, as well as bronze, gold, and silver objects. The modern museum was built between 1983 and 2001 and its appearance recalls the architectural style of the Tang Dynasty. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Did you know...

... that the International Vinegar Museum houses more than 350 types of vinegar from around the world?
... that in 1982, Brooks Resources, originally a subsidiary of the Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company, donated 135 acres (55 ha) to help Donald Kerr establish the High Desert Museum near Bend, Oregon?
... that the Casa Rull in Andorra was said to be occupied by "fat peasants"?
... that painter Fang Zengxian served as president of the Shanghai Art Museum, and founded the Shanghai Biennale?
... that in 2017, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History discovered that its 19th-century diorama Lion Attacking a Dromedary contained a human skull?
... that the private collections of Giuseppe Saverio Poli formed the foundation of the Zoological Museum of Naples?

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

Selected type of museum

USS Wisconsin is one of four Iowa class battleships opened to the public as a museum (berthed at Nauticus in Norfolk, VA)

A maritime museum (sometimes nautical museum) is a museum specializing in the display of objects relating to ships and travel on large bodies of water. A subcategory of maritime museums are naval museums, which focus on navies and the military use of the sea.

The great prize of a maritime museum is a historic ship (or a replica) made accessible as a museum ship, but as these are large and require a considerable budget to maintain, many museums preserve smaller or more fragile ships or partial ships within the museum buildings. Most museums exhibit interesting pieces of ships (such as a figurehead or cannon), ship models, and miscellaneous small items associated with ships and shipping, like cutlery, uniforms, and so forth. (Full article...)

In the news

1 May 2022 – COVID-19 pandemic: Italy removes their Green Pass for all indoor places except hospitals and nursing homes and lifts their COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandate for museums, bars, hotels, and restaurants. However, masks will still be required for public transport until June 15. (Wanted In Rome)
15 April 2022 –: Gasteranthus extinctus, an orange wild flower that is a member of the Gesneriaceae family, is rediscovered in Ecuador after being considered extinct for 36 years. The study of the flower's rediscovery is published by the journal PhytoKeys and the Field Museum in Chicago. (CNET)