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 National Press Monument (Indonesian: Monumen Pers Nasional) is a monument and museum to the national Indonesian press. Formally established in 1978, more than 20 years after it was first proposed, the monument is located in Surakarta, Central Java, and operated by the Ministry of Communications and Informatics. The complex consists of an old society building, which was constructed in 1918 and used for the first meeting of the Indonesian Journalists Association (Persatuan Wartawan Indonesia, or PWI), as well as several subsequent expansions; it is listed as a cultural property of Indonesia.

The National Press Monument has a collection of over a million newspapers and magazines, as well as a variety of exhibitions and artefacts related to the history of the press in Indonesia. Facilities include a multimedia room, free-to-read newspapers, and a library. It is promoted as a site for educational tourism through various exhibitions and Facebook, and in 2013 it was visited by over 26,000 people. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

A museum/library/archival registrar is responsible for implementing policies and procedures that relate to caring for collections of cultural institutions like archives, libraries, and museums. These policies are found in the museum's collections policy, the guiding tenet of the museum explaining why the institution is in operation, dictating the museum's professional standards regarding the objects left in its care. Registrars focus on sections that include acquisitions, loans, exhibitions, deaccessions, storage, packing and shipping, security of objects in transit, insurance policies, and risk management.

As a collections care professional, they work with collection managers, conservators, and curators to balance public access to objects with the conditions needed to maintain preservation. Focusing on documentation, registrars are responsible for developing and maintaining records management systems, with individual files for each object in the collection. Smaller and mid-sized institutions may combine the role of registrar with that of collections manager, while large institutions often have multiple registrars, each overseeing a different curatorial department. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that the Deutsches Romantik-Museum in Frankfurt, the only museum dedicated to the entire era of German Romanticism, looks like three houses and features blue elements?
... that the Paul Delvaux Museum exhibits not only Paul Delvaux's paintings, but also a collection of model trains?
... that Carl Cotton was the first black taxidermist to work at the Field Museum of Natural History after being hired in 1947?
... that when the National Museum of Vanuatu opened its new building in 1995, a specially selected pig was sacrificed?
... that the Huanaki Cultural Centre & Museum was destroyed by a cyclone?
... that the Seabury Tredwell House, now a museum, is Manhattan's only remaining 19th-century house with its original furnishings?

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

Selected type of museum

A design museum is a museum with a focus on product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. Many design museums were founded as museums for applied arts or decorative arts and started only in the late 20th century to collect design.

The first museum of this kind was the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In Germany the first museum of decorative arts was the Deutsches-Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin (now Kunstgewerbemuseum), founded in 1868 in Berlin. (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)