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 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 California Science Center (sometimes spelled California ScienCenter) is a state agency and museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, next to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the University of Southern California. Billed as the West Coast's largest hands-on science center, the California Science Center is a public-private partnership between the State of California and the California Science Center Foundation. The California Natural Resources Agency oversees the California Science Center and the California African American Museum. Founded in 1951 as the "California Museum of Science and Industry", the Museum was remodeled and renamed in 1998 as the "California Science Center". The California Science Center hosts the California State Science Fair annually.
Admission is free for their permanent exhibition galleries, such as the Space Shuttle Endeavour and other prominent aircraft and spacecraft, and to various demonstrations. There are price charges for special exhibitions, educated films shown in their IMAX theater, and special activities that include a climbing wall, a motion simulator, and a high-wire bicycle. (Full article...)
Selected interior image
- Image 1Old Dutch display case in Branderszaal Lange Haven 97, Schiedam
- Image 2Exhibit in Indonesia Museum, Jakarta, displaying the traditional costumes of Indonesian ethnic groups
- Image 3The South Hall of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia, an aerospace museum, showing the Enola Gay bomber and other aeroplanes
- Image 5The queen's chamber of the Petit Trianon, Versailles, the former residence of Marie Antoinette
- Image 6The Industrial Gallery, housed in the original part of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, designed by Yeoville Thomason and opened in 1885
- Image 7Display cases in Altena Castle
- Image 8Entrance hall of the Vienna Technical Museum, one of the largest technology museums in Europe
- Image 10The Dinosaur Hall of the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin, showing the skeleton of Giraffatitan brancai, among the largest mounted skeletons in the world
- Image 11The Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.
- Image 13Floating Heads by Sophie Cave (2006), installed in the East Court of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
- Image 15The Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, has the world's largest stained-glass ceiling, designed by Leonard French.
- Image 18Antique cuckoo clocks displayed at Cuckooland Museum, Tabley, an example of a specialised museum
- Image 19Panoramic view of the library of the Guimet Museum, Paris, an art museum specialising in Asian art
- Image 20An early 18th-century German Schrank with a traditional display of corals, from the Naturkundemuseum, Berlin
Selected general article
A curator (from Latin: cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular institution and its mission. The term "curator" may designate the head of any given division, not limited to museums. Curator roles include "community curators", "literary curators", "digital curators", and "biocurators". (Full article...)
Did you know...
- ... that the firm of Israel Sack supplied American antiques to leading private collectors and museums, including the Winterthur Museum, The Henry Ford, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
- ... that New York City's Bartow–Pell Mansion became a museum after its operator was restricted from importing and exporting plants?
- ... that for fifteen years Joseph Henry Gest was both the director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the president of the Rookwood Pottery Company, spending mornings at one and afternoons at the other?
- ... that after one of Piet Mondrian's paintings (shown) was discovered to have been hanging upside down for decades, the museum left it as is?
- ... that the 1932 sale of the Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki, a Japanese painted handscroll, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, provoked outrage in Japan?
- ... that a pair of sealskin-covered high heels by Inuk designer Nicole Camphaug are held in the Bata Shoe Museum of Toronto?
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 1Paifang 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 3Aerial 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 5The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
- Image 8The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
- Image 9The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
- Image 10The 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 11A 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 12The British Museum, London
- Image 13Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
- Image 14The State Historical Museum, Moscow
- 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 Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
- Image 18Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
- Image 19Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
- Image 20The 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 21The Museum Island, Berlin
- Image 23Small 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 25The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
- Image 26São 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 28Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
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
- 31 May 2024 – Israel–Hamas war protests
- Pro-Palestinian protesters occupy parts of the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, New York, U.S. (Reuters)
- 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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