Portal:Museums

The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying and preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have non-exhibited collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Museums host a much wider range of objects than libraries and usually focus on a specific theme, such as the arts, science, natural history, or local history. Museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often tourist attractions, and many draw large numbers of visitors from outside of 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

Interactive fullscreen map

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

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 one of the items on display at the Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts was George Washington's shaving brush?
... that Susan Finnegan was the first female head of the arachnids section at the Natural History Museum, London, but had to resign her job to marry?
... that the Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell operated as a residence, a house of correction, a factory, and finally a museum?
... that Rust Red Hills is being sold to renovate student housing, a court-approved move that museum associations say violates the ethics of deaccessioning?
... that Gracie Mansion became New York City's mayoral residence after serving as a public toilet and a museum?
... that the Lemmon Petrified Wood Park & Museum contains 3,200 tons of petrified wood?

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

Selected type of museum

An agricultural museum is a museum dedicated to preserving agricultural history and heritage. It aims to educate the public on the subject of agricultural history, their legacy and impact on society. To accomplish this, it specializes in the display and interpretation of artifacts related to agriculture, often of a specific time period or in a specific region. They may also display memorabilia related to farmers or businesspeople who impacted society via agriculture (for example, size of the land cultivated as compared to other farmers) or agricultural advances (for example, technology implementation).

An agricultural museum is said to be diachronic if it presents the entire narrative associated with subject of agriculture within its walls, or to be synchronic if it limits its displays to a single experience. (Full article...)