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The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

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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The State Hermitage Museum (Russian: Государственный Эрмитаж, romanized: Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, IPA: [ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ]) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022.

Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (the numismatic collection accounts for about one-third of them). The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.

Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre—are all open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

A conservator-restorer is a professional responsible for the preservation of artistic and cultural artifacts, also known as cultural heritage. Conservators possess the expertise to preserve cultural heritage in a way that retains the integrity of the object, building or site, including its historical significance, context and aesthetic or visual aspects. This kind of preservation is done by analyzing and assessing the condition of cultural property, understanding processes and evidence of deterioration, planning collections care or site management strategies that prevent damage, carrying out conservation treatments, and conducting research. A conservator's job is to ensure that the objects in a museum's collection are kept in the best possible condition, as well as to serve the museum's mission to bring art before the public. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that The Citi Exhibition: Manga at the British Museum was the largest exhibition of manga ever held outside Japan?
... that curator Nina Tonga is the first Pasifika person to be a contemporary art curator at Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand?
... 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 visitors to the Museum of Sexual Cultures can make offerings to a statue of Priapus?
... that Lamia Al-Gailani Werr helped rebuild the Iraq Museum after it was looted in the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq?
... that the Land of Lost Content contains bluebirds from the Blue Bird Toffee factory gates, tickets from the first National Lottery draw and a Sinclair C5?

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 2The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 3The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 4The British Museum, London
Image 5Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 6Paifang 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 7Small 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 8The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 9Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 10The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 11The 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 12The 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 13National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 14The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 15The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 16Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 17The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 18The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 19Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
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 21São 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 22Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 23A 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 24The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 25The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 26The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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 28Aerial 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

Selected type of museum

A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of subject matter and introduced many interactive exhibits. Modern science museums, increasingly referred to as 'science centres' or 'discovery centres', also feature technology.

While the mission statements of science centres and modern museums may vary, they are commonly places that make science accessible and encourage the excitement of discovery. (Full article...)