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

Location in Washington, D.C.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), colloquially known as the Blacksonian, is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in 2003 and opened its permanent home in 2016 with a ceremony led by President Barack Obama.

Early efforts to establish a federally owned museum featuring African-American history and culture can be traced to 1915 and the National Memorial Association, although the modern push for such an organization did not begin until the 1970s. After years of little success, a legislative push began in 1988 that led to authorization of the museum in 2003. A site was selected in 2006, and a design submitted by Freelon Group/Adjaye Associates/Davis Brody Bond was chosen in 2009. Construction began in 2012 and the museum completed in 2016.

The NMAAHC is the world's largest museum dedicated to African-American history and culture. In 2022 it welcomed 1,092,552 visitors, and was second-most visited Smithsonian Museum, and eighth in the List of most-visited museums in the United States. The museum has more than 40,000 objects in its collection, although only about 3,500 items are on display. The 350,000-square-foot (33,000 m²), 10 story building (five above and five below ground) and its exhibits have won critical praise. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

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 the Felix M. Warburg House was converted into the Jewish Museum after nearly being replaced by apartments?
... that when the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum was burned during the recent Battle of Ivankiv, artworks by Hanna Veres and Maria Prymachenko were destroyed?
... that curator Nina Tonga is the first Pasifika person to be a contemporary art curator at Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand?
... that a pair of sealskin-covered high heels by Inuk designer Nicole Camphaug are held in the Bata Shoe Museum of Toronto?
... that Daniel Sickles's leg is a popular museum display?
... that New York City's Bartow–Pell Mansion became a museum after its operator was restricted from importing and exporting plants?

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

An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned with visual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry, performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections. (Full article...)