Portal:Museums

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 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 ranges 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 only much later did the emphasis on educating the public take root. (Full article...)

Selected museum

The Forbidden City viewed from Jingshan Hill

The Forbidden City (Chinese: 紫禁城; pinyin: zǐ jìn chéng) is a palace complex in Dongcheng District, Beijing, China, at the center of the Imperial City of Beijing. It is surrounded by numerous opulent imperial gardens and temples including the 22 ha (54-acre) Zhongshan Park, the sacrificial Imperial Ancestral Temple, the 69 ha (171-acre) Beihai Park, and the 23 ha (57-acre) Jingshan Park. It is officially administered by the Palace Museum.

The Forbidden City was constructed from 1406 to 1420, and was the former Chinese imperial palace and winter residence of the Emperor of China from the Ming dynasty (since the Yongle Emperor) to the end of the Qing dynasty, between 1420 and 1924. The Forbidden City served as the home of Chinese emperors and their households and was the ceremonial and political center of the Chinese government for over 500 years. Since 1925, the Forbidden City has been under the charge of the Palace Museum, whose extensive collection of artwork and artifacts were built upon the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987.

The complex consists of 980 buildings, encompassing 9,999 rooms and covering 720,000 m² (72 ha)/178 acres. The palace exemplifies the opulence of the residences of the Chinese emperor and the traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere. It is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. Since 2012, the Forbidden City has seen an average of 14 million visitors annually, and received more than 19 million visitors in 2019. In 2018, the Forbidden City's market value was estimated at US$70 billion, making it both the world's most valuable palace and the most valuable piece of real estate anywhere in the world.

The Forbidden City in Beijing is one of the largest and most well-preserved wooden structures in the world. It was listed as the first batch of national key cultural relics in 1961. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Children during a museum lesson at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1960

Museum education is a specialized field devoted to developing and strengthening the education role of informal education spaces and institutions such as museums.

In a critical report called Excellence and Equity published in 1992 by the American Association of Museums, the educational role of museums was identified as the core to museums' service to the public. As museum education has developed as a field of study and interest in its own right, efforts have been made to record its history and to establish a research agenda to strengthen its position as a discipline in the wider work of museums. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that some of the Science Museum Group's collection have Never Been Seen?
... that the Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust in Madrid was the first Holocaust memorial in Spain when it opened in 2007?
... that Max Creutz, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld from 1922, acquired modern art including a painting by Max Ernst and a large collection of Bauhaus creations?
... that the Springfield Science Museum is home to the oldest operating projection planetarium in the United States?
... that the Kimiuo Aisek Memorial Museum is the first museum in Chuuk State and exhibits artefacts collected from Pacific War wreck sites?
... that Ashton Hawkins arranged for the construction of the West Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, to house the Temple of Dendur?

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 1National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 2Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 3The 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 4The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 5The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 6The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 7Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 8Aerial 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 9The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 10São 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 11The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 12Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 13The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
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 State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 16The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 17The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 18Small 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 19The 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 20The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 21Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 22The British Museum, London
Image 23The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
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 Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
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 27Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 28The Dalí Theatre and Museum, commemorating Salvador Dalí in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia, has a geodesic dome and is decorated with giant eggs.

Selected type of museum

The Buell Children's Museum in Pueblo, Colorado was ranked #2 children's art museum in the United States by Child Magazine.

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...)

In the news

15 December 2023 –: Albania returns 20 icons to North Macedonia that were trafficked a decade ago, according to Albania's Culture Ministry. A handover ceremony is held at the National History Museum in the Albanian capital, Tirana. (AP)

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