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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

Narrow courtyard between the two wings
of the museum, with view toward the Arno river

The Uffizi Gallery (UK: /juːˈfɪtsi, ʊˈfiːtsi/ yoo-FIT-see, uu-FEET-see; Italian: Galleria degli Uffizi, pronounced [ɡalleˈriːa deʎʎ ufˈfittsi]) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best-known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the period of the Italian Renaissance.

After the ruling House of Medici died out, their art collections were given to the city of Florence under the famous Patto di famiglia negotiated by Anna Maria Luisa, the last Medici heiress. The Uffizi is one of the first modern museums. The gallery had been open to visitors by request since the sixteenth century, and in 1769 it was officially opened to the public, formally becoming a museum in 1865. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

A Collections Management System (CMS), sometimes called a Collections Information System, is software used by the collections staff of a collecting institution or by individual private collectors and collecting hobbyists or enthusiasts. Collecting institutions are primarily museums and archives and cover a very broad range from huge, international institutions, to very small or niche-specialty institutions such as local historical museums and preservation societies. Secondarily, libraries and galleries are also collecting institutions. Collections Management Systems (CMSs) allow individuals or collecting institutions to organize, control, and manage their collections' objects by “tracking all information related to and about” those objects. In larger institutions, the CMS may be used by collections staff such as registrars, collections managers, and curators to record information such as object locations, provenance, curatorial information, conservation reports, professional appraisals, and exhibition histories. All of this recorded information is then also accessed and used by other institutional departments such as “education, membership, accounting, and administration."

Though early Collections Management Systems were cataloging databases, essentially digital versions of card catalogs, more recent and advanced systems are being used to improve communication between museum staff and to automate and manage collections-based tasks and workflows. Collections Management Systems are also used to provide access to information about an institution's collections and objects to academic researchers, institutional volunteers, and the public, increasingly through online methods. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that a travelling museum exhibition in Japan displays "life-size" renditions of Pokémon skeletons alongside the fossils of actual prehistoric animals?
... that Museum Arnhem in the Netherlands celebrated its 100th anniversary with a giant cat picture?
... 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 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 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 the site of the headquarters of the German colonization of Texas was converted into a museum?

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 1Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 2Paifang 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 3The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 4The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 5The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 6Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 7National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 8The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 9The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 10The 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 11The British Museum, London
Image 12Aerial 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 13The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 14The 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 15Small 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 16A 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 17Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 18The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 19The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 20Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 21Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 22São 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 23The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 24The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 25The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 26The 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 27The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 28Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter