Portal:Museums
The Museums Portal
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...)
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The Van Gogh Museum (Dutch pronunciation: [vɑŋˈɣɔx mʏˌzeːjʏm]) is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on 2 June 1973, and its buildings were designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa.
The museum contains the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world. In 2017, the museum had 2.3 million visitors and was the most-visited museum in the Netherlands, and the 23rd-most-visited art museum in the world. In 2023 the museum welcomed 1.7 million visitors. (Full article...)
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Collection maintenance is an area of collections management that consists of the day-to-day hands on care of collections and cultural heritage. The primary goal of collections maintenance or preventive conservation is to prevent further decay of cultural heritage by ensuring proper storage and upkeep including performing regular housekeeping of the spaces and objects and monitoring and controlling storage and gallery environments. Collections maintenance is part of the risk management field of collections management. The professionals most involved with collections maintenance include collection managers, registrars, and archivists, depending on the size and scope of the institution. Collections maintenance takes place in two primary areas of the museum: storage areas and display areas.
Collection maintenance and its tasks all work as a means to continually observe the condition of collections and ensure they are properly maintained and cared for. Because museums and repositories are stewards of cultural property in the public trust, they have a "responsibility to provide reasonable care for the objects entrusted" to them. Museum's collections maintenance tasks can also involve assessing and implementing strategies to improve storage areas and containers while continuously monitoring environmental conditions that may affect objects. (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that the Huanaki Cultural Centre & Museum was destroyed by a cyclone?
- ... that the Richard Childress Racing Museum is located in the former team workshop in which Richard Childress Racing won six NASCAR Cup Series championships and 58 races?
- ... that The Citi Exhibition: Manga at the British Museum was the largest exhibition of manga ever held outside Japan?
- ... that exhibits at Peale's Philadelphia Museum included the first nearly complete skeleton of a mastodon?
- ... that one of the buildings that house the Safe House Museum was where Martin Luther King Jr. hid from the Ku Klux Klan on 21 March 1968, just weeks before he was assassinated?
- ... that the Felix M. Warburg House was converted into the Jewish Museum after nearly being replaced by apartments?
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For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Museums-related articles, see WikiProject Museums.
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A national history museum or national historical museum is a history museum dedicated to presenting artifacts and exhibits reflecting the history of a particular nation, usually its home country. The earliest public museums, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Louvre Museum in Paris, were focused on natural history and art, respectively, and not necessarily on subjects related to the history of any nation. Following Napoleon's use of the Louvre as a center of national pride during his reign, other countries began to use museums not just to store artifacts of aesthetic or educational value, but to portray the country itself in a positive light.
Historically, some national history museums have been used purely as propaganda tools through which governments attempt to convey an official history. For example, "the Nazi regime employed the museum as a deliberate tool of propaganda and 'public education'". It has further been argued that "the very idea of an officially sponsored national history museum is simply outdated" in light of the trend towards pluralistic interpretation of artifacts. On the other hand, it has been argued that: "To create a national history museum that discards unitary national narratives as well as causal trajectories (the teleology of the nation)—in effect to subvert the form—is probably impossible". One concern of national history museums, therefore, is how to fairly and neutrally depict negative periods in a nation's own history. (Full article...)
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- Museums
- Most visited museums (by region)
- Art museums: most visited, largest
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- Art museum
- Agricultural museum
- Archaeology museum
- Architecture museum
- Artillery museum
- Aviation museum
- Biographical museum
- Cabinet of curiosities
- Ceramics museum
- Children's museum
- Community museum
- Computer museum
- Design museum
- Dime museum
- Ecomuseum
- Economuseum
- Ethnographic village
- Farm museum
- Fashion museum
- Folk museum
- Food museum
- Green museum
- Hair museum
- Hall of Memory
- Heritage centre
- Historic house museum
- Human rights museum
- Imaginarium
- Interpretation centre
- Jewish museum
- Lapidarium
- Lighthouse museum
- Living museum
- Local museum
- Maritime museum
- Migration museum
- Mobile museum
- Museum ship
- National history museum
- Natural history museum
- Open-air museum
- Palace museum
- Postal museum
- Prefectural museum
- Print room
- Private museum
- Regimental museum
- Schatzkammer
- Science fiction libraries and museums
- Science museum
- Sex museum
- Sculpture garden
- Technology museum
- Textile museum
- Torture museum
- Toy museum
- Transport museum (list)
- University museum
- Virtual museum
- Wax museum
- Writer's home
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