Portal:Museums
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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...)
Selected museum
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Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, defined as from after 1900, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is located in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of the London Borough of Southwark.
Tate Modern is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world. As with the UK's other national galleries and museums, there is no admission charge for access to the collection displays, which take up the majority of the gallery space, whereas tickets must be purchased for the major temporary exhibitions.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the museum was closed for 173 days in 2020, and attendance plunged by 77 per cent to 1,432,991. However, it recovered strongly in 2022, with 3,883,160 visitors, making it the third most visited in Britain and the fourth-most visited art museum in the world.
The nearest railway and London Underground station is Blackfriars, which is 550 yards (0.5 km) from the gallery. (Full article...)
Selected interior image
- Image 1Entrance hall of the Vienna Technical Museum, one of the largest technology museums in Europe
- Image 3Exhibit in Indonesia Museum, Jakarta, displaying the traditional costumes of Indonesian ethnic groups
- Image 6Floating Heads by Sophie Cave (2006), installed in the East Court of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
- Image 7The Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, has the world's largest stained-glass ceiling, designed by Leonard French.
- Image 9Old Dutch display case in Branderszaal Lange Haven 97, Schiedam
- Image 10The Dinosaur Hall of the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin, showing the skeleton of Giraffatitan brancai, among the largest mounted skeletons in the world
- Image 13Display cases in Altena Castle
- Image 14The Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
- Image 15The Industrial Gallery, housed in the original part of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, designed by Yeoville Thomason and opened in 1885
- Image 16Antique cuckoo clocks displayed at Cuckooland Museum, Tabley, an example of a specialised museum
- Image 17An early 18th-century German Schrank with a traditional display of corals, from the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin
- Image 18Panoramic view of the library of the Guimet Museum, Paris, an art museum specialising in Asian art
- Image 19The queen's chamber of the Petit Trianon, Versailles, the former residence of Marie Antoinette
- Image 21The 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
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A collection manager ensures the proper care and preservation of objects within cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives. Collection managers, along with registrars, curators, and conservators, play an important role in collections care. Collection Managers and Registrars are two distinct collection roles that are often combined into one within small to mid-size cultural institutions. Collection Managers can be found in large museums and those with a history and natural history focus whose diverse collections require experienced assessment to properly sort, catalog, and store artifacts. A collection manager may oversee the registrar, archivist, curator, photographer, or other collection professionals, and may assume the responsibilities of these roles in their absence within an organization. (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that illustrator Abigail Larson once designed a wine-bottle label for the Edgar Allan Poe Museum?
- ... that when the National Museum of Vanuatu opened its new building in 1995, a specially selected pig was sacrificed?
- ... that the British Museum's 2012 exhibition Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam included textiles from the Kaaba that were described as bringing "a visceral artistic buzz to the display"?
- ... that the International Vinegar Museum houses more than 350 types of vinegar from around the world?
- ... that a teenage boy stole over US$300,000 worth of paintings from the Deshong Art Museum by simply taking them off the wall and sliding them through a window?
- ... that New York City's Bartow–Pell Mansion became a museum after its operator was restricted from importing and exporting plants?
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 1Aerial 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 2Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
- Image 3A 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 4The British Museum, London
- 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 7Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
- Image 10The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
- Image 11The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
- Image 12The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
- Image 13The 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 14Paifang 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 16Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
- Image 18Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
- Image 19The Museum Island, Berlin
- Image 20Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
- Image 21The 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 22The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
- Image 24Small 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 26The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
- Image 28The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Selected type of museum
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/CruiserAurora061609.jpg/640px-CruiserAurora061609.jpg)
A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small number of museum ships that are still operational and thus capable of regular movement.
Several hundred museum ships are kept around the world, with around 175 of them organised in the Historic Naval Ships Association though many are not naval museum ships, from general merchant ships to tugs and lightships. Many, if not most, museum ships are also associated with a maritime museum. (Full article...)
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