Portal:Museums

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The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

A museum (/mjuːˈziːəm/ mew-ZEE-əm) is an institution dedicated to displaying and/or preserving culturally significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Compared to a library, a museum hosts a much wider range of objects and usually focus around a specific theme such as the arts, science, natural history, local history, and other topics. Public museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often considered to be tourist attractions, and many museums attract large numbers of visitors from outside their host country, with the most visited museums in the world regularly 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 California Science Center (sometimes spelled California ScienCenter) is a state agency and museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, next to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the University of Southern California. Billed as the West Coast's largest hands-on science center, the California Science Center is a public-private partnership between the State of California and the California Science Center Foundation. The California Natural Resources Agency oversees the California Science Center and the California African American Museum. Founded in 1951 as the "California Museum of Science and Industry", the Museum was remodeled and renamed in 1998 as the "California Science Center". The California Science Center hosts the California State Science Fair annually.

Admission is free for their permanent exhibition galleries, such as the Space Shuttle Endeavour and other prominent aircraft and spacecraft, and to various demonstrations. There are price charges for special exhibitions, educated films shown in their IMAX theater, and special activities that include a climbing wall, a motion simulator, and a high-wire bicycle. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

A curator (from Latin: cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular institution and its mission. The term "curator" may designate the head of any given division, not limited to museums. Curator roles include "community curators", "literary curators", "digital curators", and "biocurators". (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that a Japanese-era building in the Imperial Crown Style serves as the regional museum of Russia's Sakhalin Oblast?
... that American professor Emerson Charles Denny co-published the Nelson–Denny Reading Test in 1930, which has parts held at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History?
... that the Felix M. Warburg House was converted into the Jewish Museum after nearly being replaced by apartments?
... that State Auto Mutual's life-size nativity scene was donated to the Museum of Catholic Art and History in 2023 for display at St. Joseph Cathedral?
... that before writing The Space Museum, Glyn Jones had never seen Doctor Who?
... that a teenage boy stole over US$300,000 worth of paintings from the Deshong Art Museum by simply taking them off the wall and sliding them through a window?

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

Selected type of museum

A wax museum or waxworks usually consists of a collection of wax sculptures representing famous people from history and contemporary personalities exhibited in lifelike poses, wearing real clothes.

Some wax museums have a special section dubbed the "Chamber of Horrors", in which the more grisly exhibits are displayed. Some collections are more specialized, as, for example, collections of wax medical models once used for training medical professionals. Many museums or displays in historical houses that are not wax museums as such use wax figures as part of their displays. The origin of wax museums goes back to the early 18th century at least, and wax funeral effigies of royalty and some other figures exhibited by their tombs had essentially been tourist attractions well before that. (Full article...)