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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

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The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, MBAM (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, MMFA) is an art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest art museum in Canada by gallery space. The museum is located on the historic Golden Square Mile stretch of Sherbrooke Street west.

The MMFA is spread across five pavilions, and occupies a total floor area of 53,095 square metres (571,510 sq ft), 13,000 (140,000 sq ft) of which are exhibition space. With the 2016 inauguration of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace, the museum campus was expected to become the eighteenth largest art museum in North America. The permanent collection included approximately 44,000 works in 2013. The original "reading room" of the Art Association of Montreal was the precursor of the museum's current library, the oldest art library in Canada.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is a member of the International Group of Organizers of Large-scale Exhibitions, also known as the Bizot Group, a forum which allows the leaders of the largest museums in the world to exchange works and exhibitions.

Founded in 1860, it is the oldest art museum in Canada. In 2020, it was the most visited art museum in Canada. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Museum architecture has been of increasing importance over the centuries, especially more recently.

A challenge for museum architecture is the differing purposes of the building. The museum collection must be preserved, but it also needs to be made accessible to the public. Climate control may be very important for the objects in the collection. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that the divers who found the c. 9th-century Tully Lough Cross in 1986 were convicted for trying to sell it to American museums?
... 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 while Joseph Longworth thought that he would be remembered only as "the son of his father and the father of his son", there is today a wing of the Cincinnati Art Museum named for him?
... that the Richard Childress Racing Museum is located in the former team workshop in which Richard Childress Racing won six NASCAR Cup Series championships and 58 races?
... that the New Zealand stonefly Stenoperla prasina was the five millionth specimen digitised by the Natural History Museum in London?
... that Ukrainian museum director Horpyna Vatchenko forced the Hermitage Museum to abide by its agreement and return the Kernosovskiy idol after a loan?

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

Selected type of museum

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...)

In the news

12 May 2024 –: Forty-nine Vatican Museums employees start an unprecedented labor dispute over unfair and poor working conditions against the Vatican's Pontifical Commission. (Reuters)
6 May 2024 –: The 2024 Met Gala takes place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with the theme "The Garden of Time", celebrating the Met's exhibit Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. (Vanity Fair)