Portal:Museums

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The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

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

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 only known copies of the oyster dress designed by Alexander McQueen for his collection Irere are owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Kim Kardashian?
... that Hasanpaşa Gasworks escaped its demolition through the resistance of local residents, became a festival venue for a time and was finally transformed into a museum after redevelopment?
... that squatters in Hamburg briefly occupied the former Erotic Art Museum?
... that Ukrainian artist Kateryna Antonovych worked at Prague's Museum of Ukraine's Struggle for Independence before the US Army Air Forces bombed it?
... that during the Panic of 1907, the presidents of New York City's banks and trust companies were locked in the Pierpont Morgan Library?
... 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 1A 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 2The British Museum, London
Image 3The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 4The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 5São 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 6National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 7Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 8Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 9The 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 10Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 11The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 12Small 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 13The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 14The 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 15Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 16The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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 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 19The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 20Aerial 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 21The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 22Paifang 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 23The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 24The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 25The 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 26The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 27The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 28The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997

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...)

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