Portal:Museums

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

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

Interactive fullscreen map

The Musée d'Orsay (UK: /ˌmjuːzeɪ dɔːrˈseɪ/ MEW-zay dor-SAY, US: /mjuːˈzeɪ -/ mew-ZAY -⁠, French: [myze dɔʁsɛ]) (English: Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe.

In 2022 the museum had 3.2 million visitors, up from 1.4 million in 2021. It was the sixth-most-visited art museum in the world in 2022, and second-most-visited art museum in France, after the Louvre. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Collection maintenance is an area of collections management that consists of the day-to-day hands on care of collections and cultural heritage. The primary goal of collections maintenance or preventive conservation is to prevent further decay of cultural heritage by ensuring proper storage and upkeep including performing regular housekeeping of the spaces and objects and monitoring and controlling storage and gallery environments. Collections maintenance is part of the risk management field of collections management. The professionals most involved with collections maintenance include collection managers, registrars, and archivists, depending on the size and scope of the institution. Collections maintenance takes place in two primary areas of the museum: storage areas and display areas.

Collection maintenance and its tasks all work as a means to continually observe the condition of collections and ensure they are properly maintained and cared for. Because museums and repositories are stewards of cultural property in the public trust, they have a "responsibility to provide reasonable care for the objects entrusted" to them. Museum's collections maintenance tasks can also involve assessing and implementing strategies to improve storage areas and containers while continuously monitoring environmental conditions that may affect objects. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that the Al Qarara Cultural Museum, housed in a former grain silo, contained 6000 years of history?
... that King Mohammed VI of Morocco donated part of his royal collection to the new National Jewellery Museum?
... that the now-closed Dinosaur Wildlife museum exhibited three fox squirrels posed to fight in a boxing ring?
... that to rebuild the collection of Tāoga Niue Museum in the aftermath of Cyclone Heta, staff searched through rubbish dumps for historic items?
... that Ukrainian museum director Horpyna Vatchenko forced the Hermitage Museum to abide by its agreement and return the Kernosovskiy idol after a loan?
... that squatters in Hamburg briefly occupied the former Erotic Art Museum?

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

Selected type of museum

A green museum is a museum that incorporates concepts of sustainability into its operations, programming, and facility. Many green museums use their collections to produce exhibitions, events, classes, and other programming to educate the public about the natural environment. Many, but not all, green museums reside in a building featuring sustainable architecture and technology. Green museums interpret their own sustainable practices and green design to present a model of behavior.

Green museums strive to help people become more conscious of the limitations of their world, and how their actions affect their world. The goal is to create positive change by encouraging people to make sustainable choices in their daily lives. They use their position as community-centered institutions to create a culture of sustainability. (Full article...)

In the news

12 May 2024 –: Forty-nine Vatican Museums employees start an unprecedented labor dispute over unfair and poor working conditions against the Vatican's Pontifical Commission. (Reuters)
6 May 2024 –: The 2024 Met Gala takes place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with the theme "The Garden of Time", celebrating the Met's exhibit Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. (Vanity Fair)