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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

Madame Tussauds Hong Kong is a wax museum in Hong Kong which opened in 2000 as the first Asian branch of the wax museum chain founded by Marie Tussaud. Located at the Peak Tower on Hong Kong Island, the museum houses nearly 100 wax figures of internationally known personalities, with Asian figures taking up more than a third of the total, of which sixteen were Hongkongers. The wax figures are featured in a range of themed settings such as Hong Kong Glamour, Music Icons, Historical and National Heroes, The Champions, and World Premiere. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

National Bureau of Standards preserving the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1951

In conservation, library and archival science, preservation is a set of preventive conservation activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record, book, or object while making as few changes as possible. Preservation activities vary widely and may include monitoring the condition of items, maintaining the temperature and humidity in collection storage areas, writing a plan in case of emergencies, digitizing items, writing relevant metadata, and increasing accessibility. Preservation, in this definition, is practiced in a library or an archive by a conservator, librarian, archivist, or other professional when they perceive a collection or record is in need of maintenance.

Preservation should be distinguished from interventive conservation and restoration, which refers to the treatment and repair of individual items to slow the process of decay, or restore them to a usable state. "Preventive conservation" is used interchangeably with "preservation". (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 a travelling museum exhibition in Japan displays "life-size" renditions of Pokémon skeletons alongside the fossils of actual prehistoric animals?
... that Jäñgir-Kerei Khan was responsible for establishing the first school, settlement, hospital, and museum in the Bukey Horde?
... that the Seabury Tredwell House, now a museum, is Manhattan's only remaining 19th-century house with its original furnishings?
... that a "bat ensnared by a plant" was discovered in the garden of the Palestine Museum of Natural History?
... that The Citi Exhibition: Manga at the British Museum was the largest exhibition of manga ever held outside Japan?

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

Selected type of museum

An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned with visual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry, performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections. (Full article...)