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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 Rijksmuseum (Dutch: [ˈrɛiksmyˌzeːjʏm] ^ⓘ) is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw.

The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague on 19 November 1798 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, where it was first located in the Royal Palace and later in the Trippenhuis. The current main building was designed by Pierre Cuypers and first opened in 1885. On 13 April 2013, after a ten-year renovation which cost €375 million, the main building was reopened by Queen Beatrix. In 2013 and 2014, it was the most visited museum in the Netherlands with record numbers of 2.2 million and 2.47 million visitors. It is also the largest art museum in the country.

The museum has on display 8,000 objects of art and history, from their total collection of 1 million objects from the years 1200–2000, among which are some masterpieces by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer. The museum also has a small Asian collection, which is on display in the Asian pavilion. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Cultural heritage management (CHM) is the vocation and practice of managing cultural heritage. It is a branch of cultural resources management (CRM), although it also draws on the practices of cultural conservation, restoration, museology, archaeology, history and architecture. While the term cultural heritage is generally used in Europe, in the US the term cultural resources is in more general use specifically referring to cultural heritage resources.

CHM has traditionally been concerned with the identification, interpretation, maintenance, and preservation of significant cultural sites and physical heritage assets, although intangible aspects of heritage, such as traditional skills, cultures and languages are also considered. The subject typically receives most attention, and resources, in the face of threat, where the focus is often upon rescue or salvage archaeology. Possible threats include urban development, large-scale agriculture, mining activity, looting, erosion or unsustainable visitor numbers. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that State Auto Mutual's life-size nativity scene was donated to the Museum of Catholic Art and History in 2023 for display at St. Joseph Cathedral?
... 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 the Casa Rull in Andorra was said to be occupied by "fat peasants"?
... that the names of Harvey Meyerhoff, Elie Wiesel, and Bill Clinton are carved into the cornerstone of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, according to Meyerhoff's daughter?
... that despite plans to restore the Sam H. Harris Theatre in the 1990s, it became an entrance to a wax museum?
... that during its run of screenings at the Whitney Museum, the 1979 film Asparagus was shown rear-projected onto a set that appears in the film itself?

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

Selected type of museum

A national history museum or national historical museum is a history museum dedicated to presenting artifacts and exhibits reflecting the history of a particular nation, usually its home country. The earliest public museums, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Louvre Museum in Paris, were focused on natural history and art, respectively, and not necessarily on subjects related to the history of any nation. Following Napoleon's use of the Louvre as a center of national pride during his reign, other countries began to use museums not just to store artifacts of aesthetic or educational value, but to portray the country itself in a positive light.

Historically, some national history museums have been used purely as propaganda tools through which governments attempt to convey an official history. For example, "the Nazi regime employed the museum as a deliberate tool of propaganda and 'public education'". It has further been argued that "the very idea of an officially sponsored national history museum is simply outdated" in light of the trend towards pluralistic interpretation of artifacts. On the other hand, it has been argued that: "To create a national history museum that discards unitary national narratives as well as causal trajectories (the teleology of the nation)—in effect to subvert the form—is probably impossible". One concern of national history museums, therefore, is how to fairly and neutrally depict negative periods in a nation's own history. (Full article...)

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