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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

NGV International on St Kilda Road in Southbank

The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum.

The NGV houses its collection across two sites: NGV International, located on St Kilda Road in the Melbourne Arts Precinct of Southbank, and the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, located nearby at Federation Square. The NGV International building, designed by Sir Roy Grounds, opened in 1968, and was redeveloped by Mario Bellini before reopening in 2003. It houses the gallery's international art collection and is on the Victorian Heritage Register. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, designed by Lab Architecture Studio, opened in 2002 and houses the gallery's Australian art collection.

A third site, The Fox: NGV Contemporary, is planned to open in the Melbourne Arts Precinct in 2028, and will be Australia's largest contemporary art gallery. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

*This Year Venuses Again!*, 1864. Honoré Daumier satirizes the *bourgeoisie* scandalized by the Paris Salon's Venuses.

An art exhibition is traditionally the space in which art objects (in the most general sense) meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is occasionally true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" (the French word) or "show". In UK English, they are always called "exhibitions" or "shows", and an individual item in the show is an "exhibit".

Such expositions may present pictures, drawings, video, sound, installation, performance, interactive art, new media art or sculptures by individual artists, groups of artists or collections of a specific form of art. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that after one of Piet Mondrian's paintings (shown) was discovered to have been hanging upside down for decades, the museum left it as is?
... that the Lemmon Petrified Wood Park & Museum contains 3,200 tons of petrified wood?
... that the divers who found the c. 9th-century Tully Lough Cross in 1986 were convicted for trying to sell it to American museums?
... that Saint Rose Catholic Church was moved from the ghost town of Fleetwood, Oregon, to the Fort Rock Valley Historical Homestead Museum in 1988?
... that the lobby of Wenzhou Museum includes Kuafu chasing the sun and Chang'e flying to the moon?
... that a vampire killing kit was donated to the Mercer Museum in the 1980s?

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 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 2Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
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 4Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 5The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 6The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 7Aerial 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 8The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 9The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 10Small 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 11Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 12Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 13The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 14The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 15The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 16The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
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 18A 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 19São 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 20The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 21Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 22The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
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 24National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 25The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 26The 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 27The British Museum, London
Image 28The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.

Selected type of museum

A ceramics museum is a museum wholly or largely devoted to ceramics, usually ceramic art. Its collections may also include glass and enamel, but typically concentrate on pottery, including porcelain. Most national collections are in a more general museum covering all of the arts, or just the decorative arts. However, there are a number of specialized ceramics museums, with some focusing on the ceramics of just one country, region or manufacturer. Others have international collections, which may be centered on ceramics from Europe or East Asia or have a more global emphasis.

Outstanding major ceramics collections in general museums include The Palace Museum, Beijing, with 340,000 pieces, and the National Palace Museum in Taipei city, Taiwan (25,000 pieces); both are mostly derived from the Chinese Imperial collection, and are almost entirely of pieces from China. In London, the Victoria and Albert Museum (over 75,000 pieces, mostly after 1400 CE) and British Museum (mostly before 1400 CE) have very strong international collections. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC (12,000, all East Asian) have perhaps the best of the many fine collections in the large city museums of the United States. The Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York, has more than 45,000 glass objects. (Full article...)

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