Portal:Museums

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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

The Hall's present location on Yonge Street since 1992

The Hockey Hall of Fame (French: Temple de la renommée du hockey) is a museum and hall of fame located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dedicated to the history of ice hockey, it holds exhibits about players, teams, National Hockey League (NHL) records, memorabilia and NHL trophies, including the Stanley Cup. Founded in Kingston, Ontario, the Hockey Hall of Fame was established in 1943 under the leadership of James T. Sutherland. The first class of honoured members was inducted in 1945, before the Hall of Fame had a permanent location. It moved to Toronto in 1958 after the NHL withdrew its support for the International Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, Ontario, due to funding issues. Its first permanent building opened at Exhibition Place in 1961. The hall was relocated in 1993, and is now in Downtown Toronto, inside Brookfield Place, and a historic Bank of Montreal building. The Hockey Hall of Fame has hosted International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) exhibits and the IIHF Hall of Fame since 1998.

An 18-person committee of players, coaches and others meets annually in June to select new honourees, who are inducted as players, builders or on-ice officials. In 2010, a subcategory was established for female players. The builders' category includes coaches, general managers, commentators, team owners and others who have helped build the game. Honoured members are inducted into the Hall of Fame in an annual ceremony held at the Hall of Fame building in November, which is followed by a special "Hockey Hall of Fame Game" between the Toronto Maple Leafs and a visiting team. , 299 players (including ten women), 115 builders and 16 on-ice officials have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame has been criticized for focusing mainly on players from the National Hockey League and largely ignoring players from other North American and international leagues. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

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 when the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum was burned during the recent Battle of Ivankiv, artworks by Hanna Veres and Maria Prymachenko were destroyed?
... that the Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust in Madrid was the first Holocaust memorial in Spain when it opened in 2007?
... that despite plans to restore the Sam H. Harris Theatre in the 1990s, it became an entrance to a wax museum?
... that the Seabury Tredwell House, now a museum, is Manhattan's only remaining 19th-century house with its original furnishings?
... that Alec Tyree won two Navy Crosses commanding USS Bowfin, and his voice now speaks to those who visit the museum ship?
... that the FBI set up temporary offices in a museum on an aircraft carrier while investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks?

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 1A 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 2The 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 3The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 4The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
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 6São 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 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 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 9The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 10The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 11Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 12The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 13The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 14The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 15Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 16The 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 17National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 18Aerial 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 19The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 20The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 21The British Museum, London
Image 22The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 23The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 24Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 25Small 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 26Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 27Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 28The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest

Selected type of museum

A wax museum or waxworks usually consists of a collection of wax sculptures representing famous people from history and contemporary personalities exhibited in lifelike poses, wearing real clothes.

Some wax museums have a special section dubbed the "Chamber of Horrors", in which the more grisly exhibits are displayed. Some collections are more specialized, as, for example, collections of wax medical models once used for training medical professionals. Many museums or displays in historical houses that are not wax museums as such use wax figures as part of their displays. The origin of wax museums goes back to the early 18th century at least, and wax funeral effigies of royalty and some other figures exhibited by their tombs had essentially been tourist attractions well before that. (Full article...)