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 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 courtyard of the Indian Museum

The Indian Museum (formerly called Imperial Museum of Calcutta before independence,) is a massive museum in Central Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It is the ninth oldest museum in the world and the oldest and largest museum in India and Asia, by size of collection. It has rare collections of antiques, armour and ornaments, fossils, skeletons, mummies and Mughal paintings. It was founded by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, in 1814. The founder curator was Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist.

It has six sections comprising thirty five galleries of cultural and scientific artifacts namely Indian art, archaeology, anthropology, geology, zoology and economic botany. Many rare and unique specimens, both Indian and trans-Indian, relating to humanities and natural sciences, are preserved and displayed in the galleries of these sections. In particular the art and archaeology sections hold collections of international importance.

It is an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. The present Director of the Indian Museum is Shri Arijit Dutta Choudhury who is also the Director General, NCSM and having the additional charge of Director General of National Library. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

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 Land of Lost Content contains bluebirds from the Blue Bird Toffee factory gates, tickets from the first National Lottery draw and a Sinclair C5?
... that the Museum of Classic Sci-Fi is located in the cellar of a house in Allendale, Northumberland?
... that the FBI set up temporary offices in a museum on an aircraft carrier while investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
... that a major Asian collection was donated to the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History by Jewish benefactor Albert Bender while the museum was headed by Adolf Mahr, head of the Dublin Nazi chapter?
... 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 a "bat ensnared by a plant" was discovered in the garden of the Palestine Museum of Natural History?

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 National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 3Aerial 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 4Small 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 5The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 6The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 7The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
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 10National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 11The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 12Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 13The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 14Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 15The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 16A 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 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 18The British Museum, London
Image 19Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 20The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 21The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 22The 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 23The 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 24The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 25Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
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 27São 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 28The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy

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...)