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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

Logo introduced in 1989

The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

The V&A is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in an area known as "Albertopolis" because of its association with Prince Albert, the Albert Memorial, and the major cultural institutions with which he was associated. These include the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the Royal Albert Hall and Imperial College London. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. As with other national British museums, entrance is free.

The V&A covers 12.5 acres (5.1 ha) and 145 galleries. Its collection spans 5,000 years of art, from ancient history to the present day, from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. However, the art of antiquity in most areas is not collected. The holdings of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, silver, ironwork, jewellery, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints and printmaking, drawings and photographs are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world.

The museum owns the world's largest collection of post-classical sculpture, with the holdings of Italian Renaissance sculpture being the largest outside Italy. The departments of Asia include art from South Asia, China, Japan, Korea and the Islamic world. The East Asian collections are among the best in Europe, with particular strengths in ceramics and metalwork, while the Islamic collection is amongst the largest in the Western world. Overall, it is one of the largest museums in the world. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

A collection manager ensures the proper care and preservation of objects within cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives. Collection managers, along with registrars, curators, and conservators, play an important role in collections care. Collection Managers and Registrars are two distinct collection roles that are often combined into one within small to mid-size cultural institutions. Collection Managers can be found in large museums and those with a history and natural history focus whose diverse collections require experienced assessment to properly sort, catalog, and store artifacts. A collection manager may oversee the registrar, archivist, curator, photographer, or other collection professionals, and may assume the responsibilities of these roles in their absence within an organization. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that Daniel Sickles's leg is a popular museum display?
... that one of the items on display at the Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts was George Washington's shaving brush?
... that the British Museum's 2012 exhibition Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam included textiles from the Kaaba that were described as bringing "a visceral artistic buzz to the display"?
... that the Seabury Tredwell House, now a museum, is Manhattan's only remaining 19th-century house with its original furnishings?
... that the prison scenes in the film Plurality were shot in an archaeology museum?
... 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.

Selected exterior image

Image 1Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
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 4The British Museum, London
Image 5The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 6The 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 7The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 8The 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 9The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 10The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 11Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 12Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 13Paifang 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 14A 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 15National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 16Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 17Small 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 18The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 19The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 20Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 21São 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 22The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 23The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 24Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 25The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 26The 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 27The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 28The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.

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...)

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