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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

The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a privately owned museum whose stated aim is "to celebrate the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum". It was originally in Dedham, Massachusetts, and is currently in Boston, Massachusetts. Its permanent collection includes over 700 pieces of "art too bad to be ignored", 25 to 35 of which are on public display at any one time.

MOBA was founded in 1993, after antique dealer Scott Wilson showed a painting he had recovered from the trash to some friends, who suggested starting a collection. Within a year, receptions held in Wilson's friends' home were so well-attended that the collection needed its own viewing space. The museum then moved to the basement of a theater in Dedham. Explaining the reasoning behind the museum's establishment, co-founder Jerry Reilly said in 1995: "While every city in the world has at least one museum dedicated to the best of art, MOBA is the only museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting the worst." To be included in MOBA's collection, works must be original and have serious intent, but they must also have significant flaws without being boring; curators are not interested in displaying deliberate kitsch.

MOBA has been mentioned in dozens of off-the-beaten-path guides to Boston, featured in international newspapers and magazines, and has inspired several other collections throughout the world. Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine noted that the attention the Museum of Bad Art receives is part of a wider trend of museums displaying "the best bad art". The museum has been criticized for being anti-art, but the founders deny this, responding that its collection is a tribute to the sincerity of the artists who persevered with their art despite something going horribly wrong in the process. According to co-founder Marie Jackson, "We are here to celebrate an artist's right to fail, gloriously." In a chat with the Sunn on how to identify bad art, MOBA's curator Michael Frank says, "Here at the Museum Of Bad Art (MOBA) we collect art that we believe was created in a serious attempt to make art but in which, either in the execution or original concept, something has gone terribly wrong. Rather than simply amateurish, the resulting image must be, for one reason or another, compelling to be considered museum-worthy. Some of the most interesting pieces in our collection are ones that show that the artist had some technical skill, but made some questionable decisions such as over-the-top imagery." (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

Selected general article

A display case (also called a showcase, display cabinet, shadow box, or vitrine) is a cabinet with one or often more transparent tempered glass (or plastic, normally acrylic for strength) surfaces, used to display objects for viewing. A display case may appear in an exhibition, museum, retail store, restaurant, or house. Often, labels are included with the displayed objects, providing information such as descriptions or prices. In a museum, the displayed cultural artifacts are normally part of the museum's collection, or are part of a temporary exhibition. In retail or a restaurant, the items are normally being offered for sale. A trophy case is used to display sports trophies or other awards. (Full article...)

Did you know...

... that the FBI set up temporary offices in a museum on an aircraft carrier while investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
... that the American Pigeon Museum & Library keeps a flock of hundreds of pigeons for public viewing?
... that museum administrator Herbert Smith hired a special train so that civil servants could watch a total solar eclipse in 1927?
... that Peckham Rock, a fake cave painting surreptitiously installed in the British Museum by Banksy, is actually concrete from Hackney?
... that the children's museum La Nube includes a bus-washing exhibit?
... that the Paul Delvaux Museum exhibits not only Paul Delvaux's paintings, but also a collection of model trains?

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 Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 2The 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 3The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 4National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 5Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 6A 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 7Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 8The 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 9Museo 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 11Paifang 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 12São 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 13Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 14The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 15The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
Image 16Small 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 17Aerial 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 18The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.
Image 19Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 20The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 21The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 22The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 23Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 24The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 25The British Museum, London
Image 26The 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 27The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 28The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785

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...)