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

Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac

The Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (French pronunciation: [myze dy ke bʁɑ̃li ʒak ʃiʁak]; English: Jacques Chirac Museum of Branly Quay), located in Paris, France, is a museum designed by French architect Jean Nouvel to feature the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The museum collection comprises more than a million objects (ethnographic objects, photographs, documents, etc.), of which 3,500 are on display at any given time, in both permanent and temporary thematic exhibits. A selection of objects from the museum is also displayed in the Pavillon des Sessions of the Louvre.

The Quai Branly Museum opened in 2006; it is the newest of the major museums in Paris and received 1.15 million visitors in 2016. It is jointly administered by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and serves as both a museum and as a center for research. The Musée du quai Branly is located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, close to the Eiffel Tower and the Pont de l'Alma.

The museum has been the subject of controversy, with some calling for the repatriation of its collections that were acquired through colonial conquest. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

*This Year Venuses Again!*, 1864. Honoré Daumier satirizes the *bourgeoisie* scandalized by the Paris Salon's Venuses.

An art exhibition is traditionally the space in which art objects (in the most general sense) meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is occasionally true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" (the French word) or "show". In UK English, they are always called "exhibitions" or "shows", and an individual item in the show is an "exhibit".

Such expositions may present pictures, drawings, video, sound, installation, performance, interactive art, new media art or sculptures by individual artists, groups of artists or collections of a specific form of art. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that after Nazi Germany placed anti-aircraft batteries on the property of the Genoa Conservatory, the school moved into the Villa Saluzzo Serra art museum to maintain the safety of its students?
... 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 Museum Arnhem in the Netherlands celebrated its 100th anniversary with a giant cat picture?
... that One Night with Regine was a concert in support of the child-welfare program Bantay Bata, staged on the steps of the entrance façade of the National Museum of Anthropology in Manila?
... that the firm of Israel Sack supplied American antiques to leading private collectors and museums, including the Winterthur Museum, The Henry Ford, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

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 1Aerial 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 2Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 3The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 4The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 5The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 6The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 7Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 8The British Museum, London
Image 9Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 10The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 11A 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 12São 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 13Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 14Small 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 15The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 16The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 17Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 18The 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 19The 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 20The 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 21National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 22The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
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 24The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 25Paifang 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 26The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 27Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 28The State Historical Museum, Moscow

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...)