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

The Vietnam National Museum of History (Vietnamese: Viện Bảo tàng Lịch sử Việt Nam) is in the Hoan Kiem district of Hanoi, Vietnam. The museum building was an archaeological research institution of the French School of the Far East under French colonial rule (Louis Finot École Française d'Extrême-Orient EFEO) of 1910, was extensively refurbished in 1920. It was redesigned between 1926 and 1932 by architect Ernest Hébrard. The museum was acquired by the government of North Vietnam (now the government of Vietnam) in 1958 and then the artifact collections were expanded to cover eastern arts and national history.

The museum highlights Vietnam's prehistory (about 300,000–400,000 years ago) up to the August 1945 Revolution. It has over 200,000 exhibits displayed covering items from prehistory up to the 1947 revolution and founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, arranged in five major sections. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

A collection manager ensures the proper care and preservation of objects within cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives. Collection managers, along with registrars, curators, and conservators, play an important role in collections care. Collection Managers and Registrars are two distinct collection roles that are often combined into one within small to mid-size cultural institutions. Collection Managers can be found in large museums and those with a history and natural history focus whose diverse collections require experienced assessment to properly sort, catalog, and store artifacts. A collection manager may oversee the registrar, archivist, curator, photographer, or other collection professionals, and may assume the responsibilities of these roles in their absence within an organization. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that Daniel Sickles's leg is a popular museum display?
... that a Japanese-era building in the Imperial Crown Style serves as the regional museum of Russia's Sakhalin Oblast?
... that a pair of sealskin-covered high heels by Inuk designer Nicole Camphaug are held in the Bata Shoe Museum of Toronto?
... that the James Norman Hall Museum is where the The Bounty Trilogy was written?
... that despite plans to restore the Sam H. Harris Theatre in the 1990s, it became an entrance to a wax museum?
... that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaimed the independence of Bangladesh from his residence in Dhaka before his arrest by the Pakistan Army?

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 1Paifang 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 2The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 3The 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 4The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 5Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 6The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 7National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 8The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 9Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 10The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 11Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 12Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 13The British Museum, London
Image 14The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 15The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 16The 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 17Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 18São 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 19The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 20Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
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 22A 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 23Small 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 24The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 25The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 26The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 27The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 28The Dalí Theatre and Museum, commemorating Salvador Dalí in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia, has a geodesic dome and is decorated with giant eggs.

Selected type of museum

The Russian *Aurora*, one of the few protected cruisers to be preserved, is one of the world's most visited vessels

A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small number of museum ships that are still operational and thus capable of regular movement.

Several hundred museum ships are kept around the world, with around 175 of them organised in the Historic Naval Ships Association though many are not naval museum ships, from general merchant ships to tugs and lightships. Many, if not most, museum ships are also associated with a maritime museum. (Full article...)