The Museums Portal
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 displays 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, local history 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...)
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Facade of the east entrance from Central Park West |
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 20 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain about 35 million specimens of plants, animals, fungi, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum occupies more than 2,500,000 sq ft (232,258 m2). AMNH has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.
The AMNH is a private 501(c)(3) organization. Its mission statement is: "To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe." (Full article...)
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A curator (from Latin: cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular institution and its mission. In recent years the role of curator has evolved alongside the changing role of museums, and the term "curator" may designate the head of any given division. More recently, new kinds of curators have started to emerge: "community curators", "literary curators", "digital curators" and "biocurators". (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that a museum in Sendai was built around a 20,000-year-old campsite?
- ... that a pair of sealskin-covered high heels by Inuk designer Nicole Camphaug are held in the Bata Shoe Museum of Toronto?
- ... that visitors to the Museum of Sexual Cultures can make offerings to a statue of Priapus?
- ... that the Museum of Literature Ireland is branded MoLI in homage to Molly Bloom of James Joyce's Ulysses, of which it holds "Copy No. 1"?
- ... that the Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust in Madrid was the first Holocaust memorial in Spain when it opened in 2007?
- ... that when the National Museum of Vanuatu opened its new building in 1995, a specially selected pig was sacrificed?
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For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Museums-related articles, see WikiProject Museums.
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A wax museum or waxworks usually consists of a collection of wax sculptures representing famous people from history and contemporary personalities exhibited in lifelike poses, wearing real clothes.
Some wax museums have a special section dubbed the "Chamber of Horrors", in which the more grisly exhibits are displayed. Some collections are more specialized, as, for example, collections of wax medical models once used for training medical professionals. Many museums or displays in historical houses that are not wax museums as such use wax figures as part of their displays. The origin of wax museums goes back to the early 18th century at least, and wax funeral effigies of royalty and some other figures exhibited by their tombs had essentially been tourist attractions well before that. (Full article...)
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- Museums
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- Art museum
- Agricultural museum
- Archaeology museum
- Architecture museum
- Artillery museum
- Aviation museum
- Biographical museum
- Cabinet of curiosities
- Ceramics museum
- Children's museum
- Community museum
- Computer museum
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- Dime museum
- Ecomuseum
- Economuseum
- Ethnographic village
- Farm museum
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- Food museum
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- Hair museum
- Hall of Memory
- Heritage centre
- Historic house museum
- Human rights museum
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- Interpretation centre
- Jewish museum
- Lapidarium
- Lighthouse museum
- Living museum
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- Migration museum
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- National history museum
- Natural history museum
- Open-air museum
- Palace museum
- Postal museum
- Prefectural museum
- Print room
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- Regimental museum
- Schatzkammer
- Science fiction libraries and museums
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- Sex museum
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- Technology museum
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- Torture museum
- Toy museum
- Transport museum (list)
- University museum
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