Portal:Museums

The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying and preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have non-exhibited collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Museums host a much wider range of objects than libraries and usually focus on a specific theme, such as the arts, science, natural history, or local history. Museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often tourist attractions, and many draw large numbers of visitors from outside of 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

National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

The National Palace Museum, also known as Taipei Palace Museum, is a national museum headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in Beijing in 1925, the museum was re-established in Shilin, Taipei, in 1965, later expanded with a southern branch in Taibao, Chiayi, in 2015.

The museum holds a permanent collection of nearly 700,000 pieces of artifacts and artworks, primarily comprising items relocated from the Beijing Palace Museum and other institutions in the mainland China during the government of the Republic of China's retreat to Taiwan. Before the re-establishment of the museum in Shilin in 1965, these collections were temporarily housed in various locations across Taiwan.

Spanning 8,000 years of history from the Neolithic to the modern era, the museum's collection reflects a comprehensive record of Chinese history. Like the Palace Museum in Beijing, the museum's extensive array of artifacts and artworks were based on the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties in the Forbidden City. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

National Bureau of Standards preserving the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1951

In conservation, library and archival science, preservation is a set of preventive conservation activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record, book, or object while making as few changes as possible. Preservation activities vary widely and may include monitoring the condition of items, maintaining the temperature and humidity in collection storage areas, writing a plan in case of emergencies, digitizing items, writing relevant metadata, and increasing accessibility. Preservation, in this definition, is practiced in a library or an archive by a conservator, librarian, archivist, or other professional when they perceive a collection or record is in need of maintenance.

Preservation should be distinguished from interventive conservation and restoration, which refers to the treatment and repair of individual items to slow the process of decay, or restore them to a usable state. "Preventive conservation" is used interchangeably with "preservation". (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that the Springfield Science Museum is home to the oldest operating projection planetarium in the United States?
... that Peckham Rock, a fake cave painting surreptitiously installed in the British Museum by Banksy, is actually concrete from Hackney?
... that a haniwa horse in Tokyo National Museum is of particular significance due to its horse trappings?
... that the Al Qarara Cultural Museum, housed in a former grain silo, contained 6000 years of history?
... that the prison scenes in the film Plurality were shot in an archaeology museum?
... that the Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell operated as a residence, a house of correction, a factory, and finally a museum?

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For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Museums-related articles, see WikiProject Museums.

Selected exterior image

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

Selected type of museum

The Louvre in Paris, the most-visited art museum in the world in 2022.

An art museum, or art gallery, is an organization, usually with buildings or spaces for the display of art from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned with visual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry, performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections. (Full article...)

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