Portal:Museums

Introduction

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

Entrance to the Croatian Natural History Museum

The Croatian Natural History Museum (Croatian: Hrvatski prirodoslovni muzej) is the oldest and biggest natural history museum and the main body for natural history research, preservation and collection in Croatia. Located on Dimitrije Demeter Street in Gornji Grad, one of the oldest neighbourhoods of the Croatian capital Zagreb, it owns one of the biggest museum collections in Croatia, with over 2 million artefacts, including over 1.1 million animal specimens. It was founded in 1846 as the "National Museum". The National Museum was later split up into five museums, three of which were in 1986 merged as departments of the newly named Croatian Natural History Museum. The museum contains a large scientific library open to the public, and publishes the first Croatian natural history scientific journal, Natura Croatica.

The permanent display of the Croatian Natural History Museum consists of mineralogical, petrographical and zoological collections, as well as two permanent exhibits in the atrium: the Rock Map of Croatia and the Geological Pole. It is home to the remains of the Neanderthal from Krapina. As of 2021, the museum is closed pending the completion of reconstruction following the 2020 Zagreb earthquake. (Full article...)

Selected interior

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

Selected general article

Examination of a 3D printed artwork by Tom Lomax using microscopy

Heritage science is the interdisciplinary domain of scientific study of cultural and natural heritage. Heritage science draws on diverse humanities, sciences and engineering disciplines. It focuses on enhancing the understanding, care and sustainable use of heritage so it can enrich people's lives, both today and in the future. Heritage science is an umbrella term encompassing all forms of scientific enquiry into human works and the combined works of nature and humans, of value to people.

The above definition was developed though a community consultation organised by ICCROM and the European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science in 2019. (Full article...)

Did you know...

• ... 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?
• ... that Kobe and Vanessa Bryant were founding donors of the National Museum of African American History and Culture?
• ... that landscape architect Harriet Pattison collaborated with her lover Louis Kahn on the design of Four Freedoms Park and the grounds of the Kimbell Art Museum?
• ... that the site of the headquarters of the German colonization of Texas was converted into a museum?
• ... that exhibits at Peale's Philadelphia Museum included the first nearly complete skeleton of a mastodon?
• ... that the Republican Palace Museum in Khartoum was originally a cathedral?

Get involved

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

Selected exterior

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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
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  The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
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  The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
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  National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
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  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
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  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 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
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  The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
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  The Museum Island, Berlin
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  The 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
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  The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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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.
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  The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
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  Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
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  The British Museum, London
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  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
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  Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
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  The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
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  Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
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  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
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  The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
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  Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
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  The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
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  The State Historical Museum, Moscow
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  The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
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  Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
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  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
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  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

Selected type of museum

The Frank Lloyd Wright virtual museum in Second Life, in 2010

A virtual museum is a digital entity that draws on the characteristics of a museum, in order to complement, enhance, or augment the museum experience through personalization, interactivity, and richness of content. Virtual museums can perform as the digital footprint of a physical museum, or can act independently, while maintaining the authoritative status as bestowed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in its definition of a museum. In tandem with the ICOM mission of a physical museum, the virtual museum is also committed to public access; to both the knowledge systems embedded in the collections and the systematic, and coherent organization of their display, as well as to their long-term preservation. As with a traditional museum, a virtual museum can be designed around specific objects (such as an art museum or a natural history museum), or can consist of online exhibitions created from primary or secondary resources (as, for example in a science museum). Moreover, a virtual museum can refer to the mobile or World Wide Web offerings of traditional museums (e.g., displaying digital representations of its collections or exhibits); or can be born digital content such as, 3D environments, net art, virtual reality and digital art. Often, discussed in conjunction with other cultural institutions, a museum by definition, is essentially separate from its sister institutions such as a library or an archive. Virtual museums are usually, but not exclusively delivered electronically when they are denoted as online museums, hypermuseum, digital museum, cybermuseums or web museums. (Full article...)

Subcategories

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Museums

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Lists of museums

Museum stubs

Wikipedia categories named after museums

Subtopics

• Collection
• Museology

Lists

• Museums
• Most visited museums (by region)
• Art museums: most visited, largest

Types

• Art museum
• Agricultural museum
• Archaeology museum
• Architecture museum
• Artillery museum
• Aviation museum
• Biographical museum
• Cabinet of curiosities
• Ceramics museum
• Children's museum
• Community museum
• Computer museum
• Design museum
• Dime museum
• Ecomuseum
• Economuseum
• Ethnographic village
• Farm museum
• Fashion museum
• Folk museum
• Food museum
• Green museum
• Hair museum
• Hall of Memory
• Heritage centre
• Historic house museum
• Human rights museum
• Imaginarium
• Interpretation centre
• Jewish museum
• Lapidarium
• Lighthouse museum
• Living museum
• Local museum
• Maritime museum
• Migration museum
• Mobile museum
• Museum ship
• National history museum
• Natural history museum
• Open-air museum
• Palace museum
• Postal museum
• Prefectural museum
• Print room
• Private museum
• Regimental museum
• Schatzkammer
• Science fiction libraries and museums
• Science museum
• Sex museum
• Sculpture garden
• Technology museum
• Textile museum
• Torture museum
• Toy museum
• Transport museum (list)
• University museum
• Virtual museum
• Wax museum
• Writer's home

Related

• Archive
• Botanical garden
• Library
• Zoo

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