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 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

The Palazzo Pitti (Italian: [paˈlattso ˈpitti]), in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker.

The palace was bought by the Medici family in 1549 and became the chief residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It grew as a great treasure house as later generations amassed paintings, plates, jewelry and luxurious possessions.

In the late 18th century, the palazzo was used as a power base by Napoleon and later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919.

The palazzo is now the largest museum complex in Florence. The principal palazzo block, often in a building of this design known as the corps de logis, is 32,000 square metres. It is divided into several principal galleries or museums detailed below. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Cultural heritage management (CHM) is the vocation and practice of managing cultural heritage. It is a branch of cultural resources management (CRM), although it also draws on the practices of cultural conservation, restoration, museology, archaeology, history and architecture. While the term cultural heritage is generally used in Europe, in the US the term cultural resources is in more general use specifically referring to cultural heritage resources.

CHM has traditionally been concerned with the identification, interpretation, maintenance, and preservation of significant cultural sites and physical heritage assets, although intangible aspects of heritage, such as traditional skills, cultures and languages are also considered. The subject typically receives most attention, and resources, in the face of threat, where the focus is often upon rescue or salvage archaeology. Possible threats include urban development, large-scale agriculture, mining activity, looting, erosion or unsustainable visitor numbers. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that the names of Harvey Meyerhoff, Elie Wiesel, and Bill Clinton are carved into the cornerstone of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, according to Meyerhoff's daughter?
... that the Museum of Classic Sci-Fi is located in the cellar of a house in Allendale, Northumberland?
... that Carl Cotton was the first black taxidermist to work at the Field Museum of Natural History after being hired in 1947?
... that the James Norman Hall Museum is where the The Bounty Trilogy was written?
... that in 1999 two necklaces were repatriated to the Cook Islands National Museum from a museum in Angus, Scotland?
... that the British Museum's 2012 exhibition Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam included textiles from the Kaaba that were described as bringing "a visceral artistic buzz to the display"?

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 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 2The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 3Aerial 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 4The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 5A 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 6The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 7The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 8Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 9Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 10São 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 11The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 12The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 13The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 14The British Museum, London
Image 15Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 16Small 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 17The State Historical Museum, Moscow
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 20Paifang 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 21National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
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 23Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 24The 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 25The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 26The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 27Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
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 national history museum or national historical museum is a history museum dedicated to presenting artifacts and exhibits reflecting the history of a particular nation, usually its home country. The earliest public museums, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Louvre Museum in Paris, were focused on natural history and art, respectively, and not necessarily on subjects related to the history of any nation. Following Napoleon's use of the Louvre as a center of national pride during his reign, other countries began to use museums not just to store artifacts of aesthetic or educational value, but to portray the country itself in a positive light.

Historically, some national history museums have been used purely as propaganda tools through which governments attempt to convey an official history. For example, "the Nazi regime employed the museum as a deliberate tool of propaganda and 'public education'". It has further been argued that "the very idea of an officially sponsored national history museum is simply outdated" in light of the trend towards pluralistic interpretation of artifacts. On the other hand, it has been argued that: "To create a national history museum that discards unitary national narratives as well as causal trajectories (the teleology of the nation)—in effect to subvert the form—is probably impossible". One concern of national history museums, therefore, is how to fairly and neutrally depict negative periods in a nation's own history. (Full article...)