Portal:Museums
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The Museums Portal
A museum (/mjuːˈziːəm/ mew-ZEE-əm) is an institution dedicated to displaying and/or preserving culturally 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 Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani; Latin: Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most well-known Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employs 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
Pope Julius II founded the museums in the early 16th century. The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling and altar wall decorated by Michelangelo, and the Stanze di Raffaello (decorated by Raphael) are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums.
In 2023, the Vatican Museums were visited by 6.8 million people. They ranked second in the list of most-visited art museums in the world after the Louvre, and third on the list of most-visited museums.
There are 24 galleries, or rooms, in total, with the Sistine Chapel, notably, being the last room visited within the Museum. (Full article...)
Selected interior image
- Image 1An early 18th-century German Schrank with a traditional display of corals, from the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin
- Image 2Old Dutch display case in Branderszaal Lange Haven 97, Schiedam
- Image 7The Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
- Image 8Floating Heads by Sophie Cave (2006), installed in the East Court of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
- Image 9The Industrial Gallery, housed in the original part of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, designed by Yeoville Thomason and opened in 1885
- Image 10The Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, has the world's largest stained-glass ceiling, designed by Leonard French.
- Image 12Entrance hall of the Vienna Technical Museum, one of the largest technology museums in Europe
- Image 14The queen's chamber of the Petit Trianon, Versailles, the former residence of Marie Antoinette
- 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 17Exhibit in Indonesia Museum, Jakarta, displaying the traditional costumes of Indonesian ethnic groups
- Image 18Antique cuckoo clocks displayed at Cuckooland Museum, Tabley, an example of a specialised museum
- Image 21Panoramic view of the library of the Guimet Museum, Paris, an art museum specialising in Asian art
- 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
A Collections Management System (CMS), sometimes called a Collections Information System, is software used by the collections staff of a collecting institution or by individual private collectors and collecting hobbyists or enthusiasts. Collecting institutions are primarily museums and archives and cover a very broad range from huge, international institutions, to very small or niche-specialty institutions such as local historical museums and preservation societies. Secondarily, libraries and galleries are also collecting institutions. Collections Management Systems (CMSs) allow individuals or collecting institutions to organize, control, and manage their collections' objects by “tracking all information related to and about” those objects. In larger institutions, the CMS may be used by collections staff such as registrars, collections managers, and curators to record information such as object locations, provenance, curatorial information, conservation reports, professional appraisals, and exhibition histories. All of this recorded information is then also accessed and used by other institutional departments such as “education, membership, accounting, and administration."
Though early Collections Management Systems were cataloging databases, essentially digital versions of card catalogs, more recent and advanced systems are being used to improve communication between museum staff and to automate and manage collections-based tasks and workflows. Collections Management Systems are also used to provide access to information about an institution's collections and objects to academic researchers, institutional volunteers, and the public, increasingly through online methods. (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that a major Asian collection was donated to the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History by Jewish benefactor Albert Bender while the museum was headed by Adolf Mahr, head of the Dublin Nazi chapter?
- ... that the Jersey Maritime Museum displays a 7.5-million-stitch tapestry depicting life under Nazi occupation that was worked on by thousands of islanders?
- ... that the Huanaki Cultural Centre & Museum was destroyed by a cyclone?
- ... that Alec Tyree won two Navy Crosses commanding USS Bowfin, and his voice now speaks to those who visit the museum ship?
- ... that the world's only museum devoted to American actor Phil Silvers is located in Coventry, England?
- ... that Ukrainian artist Kateryna Antonovych worked at Prague's Museum of Ukraine's Struggle for Independence before the US Army Air Forces bombed it?
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 1The 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 2Aerial 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 3Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
- Image 4A 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 6The British Museum, London
- Image 8The State Historical Museum, Moscow
- Image 9Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
- Image 12Paifang 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 13Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
- Image 16Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
- Image 17The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
- Image 18The Museum Island, Berlin
- Image 19The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
- Image 21Small 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 22The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
- Image 24The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
- Image 25The 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 26The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
- Image 27Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
- Image 28São 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
Selected type of museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. (Full article...)
In the news
- 12 May 2024 –
- Forty-nine Vatican Museums employees start an unprecedented labor dispute over unfair and poor working conditions against the Vatican's Pontifical Commission. (Reuters)
- 6 May 2024 –
- The 2024 Met Gala takes place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with the theme "The Garden of Time", celebrating the Met's exhibit Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. (Vanity Fair)
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