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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 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. 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

Nineteenth-century artistic rendering of the Library of Alexandria by the German artist O. Von Corven, based partially on the archaeological evidence available at that time

The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. The library was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. The idea of a universal library in Alexandria may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, to Ptolemy I Soter, who may have established plans for the Library, but the Library itself was probably not built until the reign of his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The Library quickly acquired many papyrus scrolls, owing largely to the Ptolemaic kings' aggressive and well-funded policies for procuring texts. It is unknown precisely how many scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height.

Alexandria came to be regarded as the capital of knowledge and learning, in part because of the Great Library. Many important and influential scholars worked at the Library during the third and second centuries BC, including: Zenodotus of Ephesus, who worked towards standardizing the works of Homer; Callimachus, who wrote the Pinakes, sometimes considered the world's first library catalog; Apollonius of Rhodes, who composed the epic poem the Argonautica; Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who calculated the circumference of the earth within a few hundred kilometers of accuracy; Hero of Alexandria, who invented the first recorded steam engine; Aristophanes of Byzantium, who invented the system of Greek diacritics and was the first to divide poetic texts into lines; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, who produced the definitive texts of the Homeric poems as well as extensive commentaries on them. During the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes, a daughter library was established in the Serapeum, a temple to the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis.

The influence of the Library declined gradually over the course of several centuries. This decline began with the purging of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145 BC during the reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon, which resulted in Aristarchus of Samothrace, the head librarian, resigning and exiling himself to Cyprus. Many other scholars, including Dionysius Thrax and Apollodorus of Athens, fled to other cities, where they continued teaching and conducting scholarship. The Library, or part of its collection, was accidentally burned by Julius Caesar during his civil war in 48 BC, but it is unclear how much was actually destroyed and it seems to have either survived or been rebuilt shortly thereafter. The geographer Strabo mentions having visited the Mouseion in around 20 BC, and the prodigious scholarly output of Didymus Chalcenterus in Alexandria from this period indicates that he had access to at least some of the Library's resources.

The Library dwindled during the Roman period, from a lack of funding and support. Its membership appears to have ceased by the 260s AD. Between 270 and 275 AD, Alexandria saw a Palmyrene invasion and an imperial counterattack that probably destroyed whatever remained of the Library, if it still existed. The daughter library in the Serapeum may have survived after the main Library's destruction. The Serapeum was vandalized and demolished in 391 AD under a decree issued by bishop Theophilus of Alexandria, but it does not seem to have housed books at the time, and was mainly used as a gathering place for Neoplatonist philosophers following the teachings of Iamblichus. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

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 squatters in Hamburg briefly occupied the former Erotic Art Museum?
... that Saint Rose Catholic Church was moved from the ghost town of Fleetwood, Oregon, to the Fort Rock Valley Historical Homestead Museum in 1988?
... that the Seabury Tredwell House, now a museum, is Manhattan's only remaining 19th-century house with its original furnishings?
... that the Museum of Classic Sci-Fi is located in the cellar of a house in Allendale, Northumberland?
... that the New Zealand stonefly Stenoperla prasina was the five millionth specimen digitised by the Natural History Museum in London?
... that the Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust in Madrid was the first Holocaust memorial in Spain when it opened in 2007?

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

Selected type of museum

Cabinets of curiosities (German: Kunstkammer and Kunstkabinett), also known as wonder-rooms (German: Wunderkammer), were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined. Although more rudimentary collections had preceded them, the classic cabinets of curiosities emerged in the sixteenth century. The term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings), and antiquities. In addition to the most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe formed collections that were precursors to museums.

Cabinets of curiosities served not only as collections to reflect the particular curiosities of their curators but also as social devices to establish and uphold rank in society. There are said to be two main types of cabinets. As R. J. W. Evans notes, there could be "the princely cabinet, serving a largely representational function, and dominated by aesthetic concerns and a marked predilection for the exotic," or the less grandiose, "the more modest collection of the humanist scholar or virtuoso, which served more practical and scientific purposes." Evans goes on to explain that "no clear distinction existed between the two categories: all collecting was marked by curiosity, shading into credulity, and by some sort of universal underlying design". (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)