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Portal:Museums
The Museums Portal
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...)
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The National Museum of China is an art and history museum located on the eastern side of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The National Museum of China has a total construction area of about 200,000 square meters, a collection of more than 1.4 million items, and 48 exhibition halls. It is the museum with the largest single building area in the world and the museum with the richest collection of Chinese cultural relics. It is a level-1 public welfare institution funded by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. (Full article...)
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A museum in Verkhniye Mandrogi, Leningrad Oblast, specialising in vodka -
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Entrance hall of the Vienna Technical Museum, one of the largest technology museums in Europe -
The Dinosaur Hall of the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin, showing the skeleton of Giraffatitan brancai, among the largest mounted skeletons in the world -
The Industrial Gallery, housed in the original part of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, designed by Yeoville Thomason and opened in 1885 -
The South Hall of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia, an aerospace museum, showing the Enola Gay bomber and other aeroplanes -
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Old Dutch display case in Branderszaal Lange Haven 97, Schiedam -
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Floating Heads by Sophie Cave (2006), installed in the East Court of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow -
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The Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. -
Exhibit in Indonesia Museum, Jakarta, displaying the traditional costumes of Indonesian ethnic groups -
Display cases in Altena Castle -
The Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, has the world's largest stained-glass ceiling, designed by Leonard French. -
Triangular prism-shaped display cases in the Red Dot Design Museum, Essen -
An early 18th-century German Schrank with a traditional display of corals, from the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin -
Antique cuckoo clocks displayed at Cuckooland Museum, Tabley, an example of a specialised museum -
The Galerie des Glaces of the Palace of Versailles
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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 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 vampire killing kit was donated to the Mercer Museum in the 1980s?
- ... that the Seabury Tredwell House, now a museum, is Manhattan's only remaining 19th-century house with its original furnishings?
- ... that the Lemmon Petrified Wood Park & Museum contains 3,200 tons of petrified wood?
- ... that the Deutsches Romantik-Museum in Frankfurt, the only museum dedicated to the entire era of German Romanticism, looks like three houses and features blue elements?
Get involved
For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Museums-related articles, see WikiProject Museums.
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Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture -
Small 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 -
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The Museum Island, Berlin -
National Museum, Szczecin, Poland -
Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter -
A 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 -
The 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 -
The Dalí Theatre and Museum, commemorating Salvador Dalí in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia, has a geodesic dome and is decorated with giant eggs. -
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The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785 -
The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum. -
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Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel. -
The State Historical Museum, Moscow -
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Paifang 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 -
São 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 -
The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations. -
Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style -
The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest -
Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps -
The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style -
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997 -
The British Museum, London -
Aerial 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 -
Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
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Selected type of museum
Children's museums are institutions that provide exhibits and programs to stimulate informal learning experiences for children. In contrast with traditional museums that typically have a hands-off policy regarding exhibits, children's museums feature interactive exhibits that are designed to be manipulated by children. The theory behind such exhibits is that activity can be as educational as instruction, especially in early childhood. Most children's museums are nonprofit organizations, and many are run by volunteers or by very small professional staffs.
International professional organizations of children's museums include the Association of Children's Museums (ACM), which was formed in 1962 as the American Association of Youth Museums (AAYM) and in 2007 counted 341 member institutions in 23 countries, and The Hands On! Europe Association of Children's Museum (HO!E), established in 1994, with member institutions in 34 countries as of 2007. Many museums that are members of ACM offer reciprocal memberships, allowing members of one museum to visit all the others for free or for a discounted fee. (Full article...)
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