Portal:Museums

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

The Map Room of the Cabinet War Rooms

The Churchill War Rooms is a museum in London and one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. The museum comprises the Cabinet War Rooms, a historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the Second World War, and the Churchill Museum, a biographical museum exploring the life of British statesman Winston Churchill.

Construction of the Cabinet War Rooms, located beneath the Treasury building in the Whitehall area of Westminster, began in 1938. They became fully operational on 27 August 1939, a week before Britain declared war on Germany. The War Rooms remained in operation throughout the Second World War, before being abandoned in August 1945 after the surrender of Japan.

After the war, the historic value of the Cabinet War Rooms was recognised. Their preservation became the responsibility of the Ministry of Works and later the Department for the Environment, during which time very limited numbers of the public were able to visit by appointment. In the early 1980s, the Imperial War Museum was asked to take over the administration of the site, and the Cabinet War Rooms were opened to the public in April 1984. The museum was reopened in 2005 following a major redevelopment as the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, but in 2010 this title was shortened to the Churchill War Rooms. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Collections management involves the development, storage, and preservation of cultural property, as well as objects of contemporary culture (including contemporary art, literature, technology, and documents) in museums, libraries, archives and private collections. The primary goal of collections management is to meet the needs of the individual collector or collecting institution's mission statement , while also ensuring the long-term safety and sustainability of the cultural objects within the collector's care. Collections management, which consists primarily of the administrative responsibilities associated with collection development, is closely related to collections care, which is the physical preservation of cultural heritage. The professionals most influenced by collections management include collection managers, registrars, and archivists. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that Carl Cotton was the first black taxidermist to work at the Field Museum of Natural History after being hired in 1947?
... 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 a pair of sealskin-covered high heels by Inuk designer Nicole Camphaug are held in the Bata Shoe Museum of Toronto?
... that the FBI set up temporary offices in a museum on an aircraft carrier while investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
... that the Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell operated as a residence, a house of correction, a factory, and finally a museum?
... that Ashton Hawkins arranged for the construction of the West Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, to house the Temple of Dendur?

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

Selected type of museum

A computer museum is devoted to the study of historic computer hardware and software, where a "museum" is a "permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates, and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment, for the purposes of education, study, and enjoyment", as defined by the International Council of Museums.

Some computer museums exist within larger institutions, such as the Science Museum in London, United Kingdom; and the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. Others are dedicated specifically to computing, such as:

the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, United States.
the American Computer & Robotics Museum in Bozeman, Montana, United States.
The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, United Kingdom.
The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, United Kingdom
the Nexon Computer Museum in Jeju Province. South Korea. (Full article...)

In the news

31 May 2024 – Israel–Hamas war protests: Pro-Palestinian protesters occupy parts of the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, New York, U.S. (Reuters)

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