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

Southeast entrance to HMNS.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science (abbreviated as HMNS) is a natural history museum located on the northern border of Hermann Park in Houston, Texas, United States. The museum was established in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, an organization whose goals were to provide a free institution for the people of Houston focusing on education and science. The museum complex consists of a central facility with four floors of natural science halls and exhibits, the Burke Baker Planetarium, the Cockrell Butterfly Center, and the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre (formerly known as the Wortham IMAX Theatre). In 2022, the museum received 1,520,000 visitors, making it seventh on the List of most-visited museums in the United States, and was the third most-visited U.S. science museum. Much of the museum's popularity is attributed to its large number of special or guest exhibits. (Full article...)

Did you know...

• ... that the Felix M. Warburg House was converted into the Jewish Museum after nearly being replaced by apartments?
• ... that the Seabury Tredwell House, now a museum, is Manhattan's only remaining 19th-century house with its original furnishings?
• ... 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 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 firm of Israel Sack supplied American antiques to leading private collectors and museums, including the Winterthur Museum, The Henry Ford, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
• ... that conservator Carolyn Price Horton helped to direct a "Mud Angel army" that rescued books after the Arno flooded museums and libraries in Florence, Italy, in 1966?

Get involved

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

Selected images

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  Construction of Titanic Belfast in 2010 (from Museum)
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  Museum textile storage includes rolled storage racks, hanging wardrobe and garments shelving, and cabinets. (from Museum)
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  In museums, paintings, framed and unframed, are normally hung on sliding or fixed racking. (from Museum)
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  An honours board listing the directors of a museum in Auckland, New Zealand (from Museum)
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  Visitors examining fossils displayed at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran, Iran (from Museum)
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  Officials blamed a lack of funding for a 2018 fire at the National Museum of Brazil that destroyed over 90% of its contents (from Museum)
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  A guided tour group at the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City, Mexico (from Museum)
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  Exhibit planning (from Museum)
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  Workers rallying at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (from Museum)
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  Classic cars displayed at an automotive museum, which could be considered both a history and technology museum (from Museum)
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  Restoration of a gilded mirror by a conservator (from Museum)
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  Moai figure at the British Museum (from Museum)
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  Archive Processing rooms provide a space for archivists to arrange and describe archival materials to make them accessible to researchers. (from Museum)
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  Collections storage for three-dimensional historic artifacts. (from Museum)
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  A curator and exhibit designer dressing a mannequin for an exhibit (from Museum)
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  Paintings arranged in groupings in the "salon style" (from Museum)
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  The Nantong Museum, the first Chinese-sponsored museum (from Museum)
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  An exhibition of the remains of Native Americans at the Royal Ontario Museum in 1908 (from Museum)
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  The old Ashmolean Museum building in Oxford, England (from Museum)
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  The Louvre in 1853 (from Museum)

Selected type of museum

Museo Castillo Serralles is an agricultural museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that showcases the sugar cane and its derivative rum industry

An agricultural museum is a museum dedicated to preserving agricultural history and heritage. It aims to educate the public on the subject of agricultural history, their legacy and impact on society. To accomplish this, it specializes in the display and interpretation of artifacts related to agriculture, often of a specific time period or in a specific region. They may also display memorabilia related to farmers or businesspeople who impacted society via agriculture (for example, size of the land cultivated as compared to other farmers) or agricultural advances (for example, technology implementation).

An agricultural museum is said to be diachronic if it presents the entire narrative associated with subject of agriculture within its walls, or to be synchronic if it limits its displays to a single experience. (Full article...)

Subcategories

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Museums

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Types of museums

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Museum stubs

Wikipedia categories named after museums

Subtopics

• Collection
• Museology

Lists

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

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
• 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
• University museum
• Virtual museum
• Wax museum

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