Portal:Museums

The Museums Portal

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago, Chile

A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying and preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have non-exhibited collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Museums hold a wide range of objects and often focus on a particular theme, such as the arts, science, natural history, or local history. Museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often tourist attractions, and many draw large numbers of visitors from outside of 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

Lavrushinsky Lane

The State Tretyakov Gallery (Russian: Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, romanized: Gosudarstvennaya Tretyakovskaya Galereya; abbreviated ГТГ, GTG) is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, which is considered the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.

The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Muscovite merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection, which might later grow into a museum of national art. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his already famous collection of approximately 2,000 works (1,362 paintings, 526 drawings, and 9 sculptures) to the Russian nation. The museum attracted 894,374 visitors in 2020 (down 68 percent from 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). It was 13th on the list of most-visited art museums in the world in 2020.

The façade of the gallery building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style. It was built in 1902–04 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin. During the 20th century, the gallery expanded to several neighboring buildings, including the 17th-century church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi. The collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits, ranging from the Theotokos of Vladimir to the monumental Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky and the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich. In 1977 the Gallery kept a significant part of the George Costakis collection.

In May 2012, the Tretyakov Art Gallery played host to the prestigious FIDE World Chess Championship between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand as the organizers felt the event would promote both chess and art at the same time. In May 2023, the Tretyakov Gallery refused to hand over one of its most famous icons, Andrei Rublev's Trinity, to the Russian Orthodox Church. In June 2023 the icon was transferred to Moscow's main cathedral despite the museum's protests on the personal order of Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Full article...)

Selected interior image

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

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 American Pigeon Museum & Library keeps a flock of hundreds of pigeons for public viewing?
... that the world's oldest timepiece with an anchor escapement is in the collection of the Irish Museum of Time?
... that Peckham Rock, a fake cave painting surreptitiously installed in the British Museum by Banksy, is actually concrete from Hackney?
... that a museum exhibit later became a Rockefeller family residence?
... that Josèphe Jacquiot founded a museum that was named in her honour?
... that the only known copies of the oyster dress designed by Alexander McQueen for his collection Irere are owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Kim Kardashian?

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 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Image 2The British Museum, London
Image 3The 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 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 5The Cambodian National Museum, Phnom Penh, showing its vernacular architectural style
Image 6Exhibitions Pavilion and Rotunda of the Getty Center, Los Angeles, an art museum
Image 7The Museo del Prado, Madrid, established in 1785
Image 8The Museum Island, Berlin
Image 9The Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, has an extensive collection of Armenian manuscripts.
Image 10Small 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 11The Peristylia hall in National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, the largest museum in Indonesia and one of that country's oldest
Image 12The Palazzo Vecchio Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the most-visited museum in Italy
Image 13The State Historical Museum, Moscow
Image 14Aerial 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 15The Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, has a permanent collection of murals and hosts an architecture museum.
Image 16National Museum, Szczecin, Poland
Image 17Entrance to Auschwitz I, part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, a Holocaust museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camps
Image 18Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, was rebuilt in 1996 to a design inspired by the ding, an ancient bronze cooking vessel.
Image 19Museo de la Arquitectura Ponceña, an architecture museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that focuses on the Ponce Creole architectural style
Image 20The Deutsches Museum, Munich, one of the world's largest science and technology museums
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 22Indonesia Museum, in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, an ethnology museum exemplifying Balinese architecture
Image 23The 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 24Paifang 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 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 26Now closed, the California Aerospace Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, formerly displayed a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Image 27The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, a modern art museum designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 1997
Image 28The National Art Center, Tokyo, designed by Kisho Kurokawa, is an "empty museum", lacking its own collection, which hosts temporary exhibitions from other organisations.

Selected type of museum

A design museum is a museum with a focus on product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. Many design museums were founded as museums for applied arts or decorative arts and started only in the late 20th century to collect design.

The first museum of this kind was the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In Germany the first museum of decorative arts was the Deutsches-Gewerbe-Museum zu Berlin (now Kunstgewerbemuseum), founded in 1868 in Berlin. (Full article...)

In the news

5 June 2026 – 2025 Drents Museum heist: A Dutch court sentences three men to 47 months' imprisonment for stealing Dacian golden artifacts, including the Helmet of Coțofenești, from the Drents Museum in Assen, Drenthe, in 2025. (AFP via RFI) (AP)
24 May 2026 – Russo-Ukrainian war: Four people are killed and over a hundred are injured in a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv, Ukraine. The National Chernobyl Museum is severely damaged, among other buildings. (BBC News) (The Washington Post) (Meduza)
16 May 2026 –: The carcass of a humpback whale that washed ashore on the Danish island of Anholt is confirmed to be that of Timmy, a whale that was stranded off the coast of Germany for several weeks before later being released into the North Sea. The Ocean Museum Germany concludes that Timmy likely died shortly after being released from the barge due to exhaustion. (Welt)