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 hold a wide range of objects and often focus on a particular 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

The National Museum of China is an art and history museum located on the eastern side of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The National Museum of China has a total construction area of about 200,000 square meters, a collection of more than 1.4 million items, and 48 exhibition halls. It is the museum with the largest single building area in the world and the museum with the richest collection of Chinese cultural relics. It is a level-1 public welfare institution funded by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

Museum education is a specialized field devoted to developing and strengthening the education role of informal education spaces and institutions such as museums.

In a critical report called Excellence and Equity published in 1992 by the American Association of Museums, the educational role of museums was identified as the core to museums' service to the public. As museum education has developed as a field of study and interest in its own right, efforts have been made to record its history and to establish a research agenda to strengthen its position as a discipline in the wider work of museums. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that 99% of the collection of the National Museum of Ecuador is not on public display?
... that a museum exhibit later became a Rockefeller family residence?
... that the Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell operated as a residence, a house of correction, a factory, and finally a museum?
... that a 13th-century wooden sculpture of Rāgarāja was carved from the debris of the Great Buddha Hall at Tōdai-ji in Nara, Japan?
... that pages of Lewis Hancox's graphic novel were displayed in The Cartoon Museum of London?
... that after Nazi Germany placed anti-aircraft batteries on the property of the Genoa Conservatory, the school moved into the Villa Saluzzo Serra art museum to maintain the safety of its students?

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

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...)

In the news

24 May 2026 – Russo-Ukrainian war: Four people are killed and over a hundred are injured in a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv, Ukraine. The National Chernobyl Museum is severely damaged, among other buildings. (BBC News) (The Washington Post) (Meduza)
16 May 2026 –: The carcass of a humpback whale that washed ashore on the Danish island of Anholt is confirmed to be that of Timmy, a whale that was stranded off the coast of Germany for several weeks before later being released into the North Sea. The Ocean Museum Germany concludes that Timmy likely died shortly after being released from the barge due to exhaustion. (Welt)