Portal:Museums

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

The Centre Pompidou (French pronunciation: [sɑ̃tʁ pɔ̃pidu]), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (lit. 'National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture'), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil, and the Marais. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, Su Rogers, Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini.

It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Public Information Library), a vast public library; the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe; and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the centre is known locally as Beaubourg (IPA: [bobuʁ]). It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

The centre had 3.1 million visitors in 2022, a large increase from 2021 but still below 2019 levels, due to closings caused by the COVID pandemic. It has had more than 180 million visitors since 1977 and more than 5,209,678 visitors in 2013, including 3,746,899 for the museum.

The sculpture Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a free-standing mobile that is 7.6 m (25 ft) tall, was placed in front of the Centre Pompidou in 2012. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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  Display cases in Altena Castle
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  Entrance hall of the Vienna Technical Museum, one of the largest technology museums in Europe
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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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  Antique cuckoo clocks displayed at Cuckooland Museum, Tabley, an example of a specialised museum
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  Old Dutch display case in Branderszaal Lange Haven 97, Schiedam
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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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  Iron bed in torture room at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh
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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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  The Galerie des Glaces of the Palace of Versailles
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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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  Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, an archaeology and anthropology museum
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  Exhibit in Indonesia Museum, Jakarta, displaying the traditional costumes of Indonesian ethnic groups
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  A museum in Verkhniye Mandrogi, Leningrad Oblast, specialising in vodka
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  An early 18th-century German Schrank with a traditional display of corals, from the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin
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  The Egyptian Museum, Cairo, showing some of its collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities
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  Storage gallery of the Larco Museum, Lima, Peru, a museum of pre-Columbian art
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  The Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
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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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  The queen's chamber of the Petit Trianon, Versailles, the former residence of Marie Antoinette
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  Triangular prism-shaped display cases in the Red Dot Design Museum, Essen
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  Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale

Selected general article

This Year Venuses Again!, 1864. Honoré Daumier satirizes the bourgeoisie scandalized by the Paris Salon's Venuses.

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 Paul Delvaux Museum exhibits not only Paul Delvaux's paintings, but also a collection of model trains?
• ... that the 2024 inductees to the Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame include a man with Down syndrome who has lifted 425 pounds (193 kg), an "average gymnast" turned Olympics judge, a "preeminent sportswriter", the state's "greatest high hurdler", the "inventor" of the modern sports mascot, a record-setting 10-year-old, a champion gymnast, an Olympic field hockey player, and a pro baseball player in five countries?
• ... that the New Zealand stonefly Stenoperla prasina was the five millionth specimen digitised by the Natural History Museum in London?
• ... that Daniel Sickles's leg is a popular museum display?
• ... 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 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

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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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  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 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
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  The British Museum, London
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  National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
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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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  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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  Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
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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 Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
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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
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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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  The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
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  The Museum Island, Berlin
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  The State Historical Museum, Moscow
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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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  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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  Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
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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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  Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
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  The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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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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  The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
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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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  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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  The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
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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 Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.

Selected type of museum

A Sèvres dinner-service on display at the Museo delle porcellane di Firenze.

A ceramics museum is a museum wholly or largely devoted to ceramics, usually ceramic art. Its collections may also include glass and enamel, but typically concentrate on pottery, including porcelain. Most national collections are in a more general museum covering all of the arts, or just the decorative arts. However, there are a number of specialized ceramics museums, with some focusing on the ceramics of just one country, region or manufacturer. Others have international collections, which may be centered on ceramics from Europe or East Asia or have a more global emphasis.

Outstanding major ceramics collections in general museums include The Palace Museum, Beijing, with 340,000 pieces, and the National Palace Museum in Taipei city, Taiwan (25,000 pieces); both are mostly derived from the Chinese Imperial collection, and are almost entirely of pieces from China. In London, the Victoria and Albert Museum (over 75,000 pieces, mostly after 1400 CE) and British Museum (mostly before 1400 CE) have very strong international collections. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC (12,000, all East Asian) have perhaps the best of the many fine collections in the large city museums of the United States. The Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York, has more than 45,000 glass objects. (Full article...)

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