Museum - Britannica Online Encyclopedia

15/02/2020 Museum -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Museum
Museum,
institution TABLE OF CONTENTS
dedicated to
Introduction
preserving and
History
interpreting the
primary tangible Types of museums
evidence of Museum structure and operations
National Gallery of Art humankind and
Interior of the National Gallery of Art, the environment.
Washington, D.C. In its preserving of this primary evidence, the
© Anna Krivitskaia/Dreamstime.com
museum differs markedly from the library, with which
it has often been compared, for the items housed in a
museum are mainly unique and constitute the raw
material of study and research. In many cases they are
removed in time, place, and circumstance from their
original context, and they communicate directly to the
Louvre
viewer in a way not possible through other media.
Louvre Museum, Paris.
Museums have been founded for a variety of
© Alvesgaspar
purposes: to serve as recreational facilities, scholarly
venues, or educational resources; to contribute to the
quality of life of the areas where they are situated; to attract tourism to a region; to
promote civic pride or nationalistic endeavour; or even to transmit overtly ideological
concepts. Given such a variety of purposes, museums reveal remarkable diversity in form,
content, and even function. Yet, despite such diversity, they are bound by a common goal:
the preservation and interpretation of some material aspect of society’s cultural
consciousness.
History
As institutions that preserve and interpret the material evidence of humankind, human
activity, and the natural world, museums have a long and varied history, springing from
what may be an innate human desire to collect and interpret and having discernible
origins in large collections built up by individuals and groups before the modern era.
Etymology
From mouseion to museum

The word museum has classical origins. In its Greek form, mouseion, it meant “seat of the
Muses” and designated a philosophical institution or a place of contemplation. Use of the
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Latin derivation, museum, appears to have been

restricted in Roman times mainly to places of
philosophical discussion. Thus, the great Museum at
Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy I Soter early in the 3rd
century BCE, with its college of scholars and its famous
library, was more a prototype university than an
British Museum, London, at dusk. institution to preserve and interpret material aspects
Dennis Marsico/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. of one’s heritage. The word museum was revived in
15th-century Europe to describe the collection of
Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, but the term conveyed the concept of comprehensiveness
rather than denoting a building. By the 17th century, museum was being used in Europe
to describe collections of curiosities. Ole Worm’s collection in Copenhagen was so called,
and in England visitors to John Tradescant’s collection in Lambeth (now a London
borough) called the array there a museum; the catalog of this collection, published in 1656,
was titled Musaeum Tradescantianum. In 1675 the collection, having become the property
of Elias Ashmole, was transferred to the University of Oxford. A building was constructed to
receive it, and this, soon after being opened to the public in 1683, became known as the
Ashmolean Museum. Although there is some ambivalence in the use of museum in the
legislation, drafted in 1753, founding the British Museum, nevertheless the idea of an
institution called a museum and established to preserve and display a collection to the
public was well established in the 18th century. Indeed, Denis Diderot outlined a detailed
scheme for a national museum for France in the ninth volume of his Encyclopédie,
published in 1765.
Use of the word museum during the 19th and most of the 20th century denoted a
building housing cultural material to which the public had access. Later, as museums
continued to respond to the societies that created them, the emphasis on the building
itself became less dominant. Open-air museums, comprising a series of buildings
preserved as objects, and ecomuseums, involving the interpretation of all aspects of an
outdoor environment, provide examples of this. In addition, so-called virtual museums
exist in electronic form on the Internet. Although virtual museums provide interesting
opportunities for and bring certain bene ts to existing museums, they remain dependent
upon the collection, preservation, and interpretation of material things by the real
museum.
Museology and museography
Along with the identi cation of a clear role for museums in society, there gradually
developed a body of theory the study of which is known as museology. For many reasons,
the development of this theory was not rapid. Museum personnel were nearly always
experienced and trained in a discipline related to a particular collection, and therefore they
had little understanding of the museum as a whole, its operation, and its role in society. As
a result, the practical aspects of museum work—for example, conservation and display—
were achieved through borrowing from other disciplines and other techniques, whether
or not they particularly met the requirements of the museum and its public.
Thus, not only was the development of theory slow, but the theory’s practical applications
—known as museography—fell far short of expectations. Museums suffered from a con ict
of purpose, with a resulting lack of clear identity. Further, the apprenticeship method of
training for museum work gave little opportunity for the introduction of new ideas. This
situation prevailed until other organizations began to coordinate, develop, and promote
museums. In some cases, museums came to be organized partly or totally as a
government service; in others, professional associations were formed, while an added
impetus arose where universities and colleges took on responsibilities for museum
training and research.
The words derived from museum have a respectable, if confused, history. Emanuel
Mendes da Costa, in his Elements of Conchology, published in 1776, referred to
“museographists,” and a Zeitschrift für Museologie und Antiquitätenkunde (“Journal of
Museology and Antique Studies”) appeared in Dresden in 1881. But the terms museology
and museography have been used indiscriminately in the literature, and there is a
tendency, particularly in English-speaking countries, to use museology or museum studies
to embrace both the theory and practice of museums.
The precursors of museums
Evidence from antiquity
The origins of the twin concepts of preservation and interpretation, which form the basis
of the museum, lie in the human propensity to acquire and inquire. Collections of objects
have been found in Paleolithic burials, while evidence of inquiry into the environment, and
communication of the ndings, can be seen in the cave and mobiliary art of the same
period. A development toward the idea of the museum certainly occurred early in the 2nd
millennium BCE at Larsa, in Mesopotamia, where copies of old inscriptions were made for
use in the schools. But the idea also involves the interpretation of original material—
criteria that seem to have been met by objects discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in the
6th-century-BCE levels of the Babylonian city of Ur. Woolley’s ndings indicated that the
Babylonian kings Nebuchadrezzar and Nabonidus certainly collected antiquities in their
day. In addition, in a room next to the unearthed temple school there was found not only a
collection of antiquities but also a tablet describing 21st-century-BCE inscriptions. Woolley
interpreted the tablet as a museum label. This discovery seems to suggest that Ennigaldi-
Nanna, Nabonidus’s daughter and a priestess who ran the school, had a small educational
museum there.
Classical collecting
The archaeological and historical records do not provide evidence that the museum as it is
known today developed in such early times, nor does the word museum support this,
despite its classical origin. Nevertheless, the collection of things that might have religious,
magical, economic, aesthetic, or historical value or that simply might be curiosities was
undertaken worldwide by groups as well as by individuals. In the Greek and Roman
empires the votive offerings housed in temples, sometimes in specially built treasuries, are
but one example: they included works of art and natural curiosities, as well as exotic items
brought from far- ung parts of the empires, and they were normally open to the public,
often upon payment of a small fee. Closer to the concept of a museum was the Greek
pinakotheke, such as that established in the 5th century BCE on the Acropolis at Athens,
which housed paintings honouring the gods. Nor was there a lack of public interest in art
at Rome. Indeed, art abounded in the public places of Rome, but there was no museum.
The inaccessibility of the collection of more than one Roman emperor was the subject of
public comment, and Agrippa, a deputy of Augustus, commented in the 1st century BCE to
the effect that paintings and statues should be available to the people.
Asia and Africa
In Asia veneration of the past and of its personalities also led to the collection of objects.
Collecting commenced at least as early as the Shang dynasty, which ruled China from
approximately the mid-16th to the mid-11th century BCE, and it was well developed by the
Qin dynasty (3rd century BCE)—as attested by the tomb of the Qin emperor Shihuangdi,
near Xi’an (Sian), which was guarded by an army of terra-cotta warriors and horses.
Together with other grave goods, these objects are preserved on-site in the Museum of
Qin Figures. The palace of Shihuangdi is recorded as having many rare and valuable
objects.
Successive Chinese emperors continued to promote the arts, manifest in ne works of

painting, calligraphy, metalwork, jade, glass, and pottery. For example, the Han emperor
Wudi (reigned 141/140–87/86 BCE) established an academy that contained paintings and
calligraphies from each of the Chinese provinces, and the last Han emperor, Xiandi
(abdicated 220 CE), established a gallery containing portraits of his ministers.
In Japan the Tōdai Temple, housing a colossal seated bronze statue of the Great Buddha
(Daibutsu), was built in the 8th century at Nara. The temple’s treasures still can be seen in
the Shōsō-in repository there.
At about the same time, Islamic communities were making collections of relics at the
tombs of early Muslim martyrs. The idea of waqf, formalized by Muhammad himself,
whereby property was given for the public good and for religious purposes, also resulted in
the formation of collections. In tropical Africa the collection of objects also has a long
history, as instanced in wayside shrines and certain religious ceremonies. Similar

collections were made in many other parts of the world.
Medieval Europe
In medieval Europe collections were mainly the prerogative of princely houses and the
church. Indeed, there was often a close link between the two, as in the case of the ne
treasures of the emperor Charlemagne, which were divided among a number of religious
houses early in the 9th century. Such treasures had economic importance and were used
to nance wars and other state expenses. Other collections took the form of alleged relics
of Christendom, in which there was a considerable trade. At this time Europe’s maritime
links with the rest of the world were largely through the northern Mediterranean ports of
Lombardy and Tuscany, which, together with the ecclesiastical signi cance of Rome,
brought considerable contact between the Italian peninsula and the Continent. There is
evidence of the movement of antiquities, and of a developing trade in them, from the 12th
century. Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, is reported to have bought ancient statues
during a visit to Rome in 1151 and to have dispatched them to England, a journey of about
one month’s duration.
The movement of antiquities was not con ned to those of Italy. Exotic material from other
areas entering Italian ports soon found its way into royal collections, while the Venetian
involvement in the Fourth Crusade early in the 13th century resulted in the transfer of the
famous bronze horses from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the San Marco Basilica in
Venice.
Renaissance Italy
The in uences that led to the Renaissance were already at work in Italy, and, as a result,
the rst great collections began to form. A reawakening of interest in Italy’s classical
heritage and the rise of new merchant and banking families at this northern
Mediterranean gateway to the Continent produced impressive collections of antiquities, as
well as considerable patronage of the arts. Outstanding among the collections was that
formed by Cosimo de’ Medici in Florence in the 15th century. The collection was developed
by his descendants until it was bequeathed to the state in 1743, to be accessible “to the
people of Tuscany and to all nations.” In order to display some of the Medici paintings, the
upper oor of the Uf zi Palace (designed to hold of ces, or uf zi) was converted and
opened to the public in 1582. Indeed, many of the palaces holding such collections were
open to visitors and were listed in the tourist guides of the period.
Royal collections
Elsewhere in Europe, royal collections were developed. King Matthias I of Hungary

maintained his paintings at Buda and kept Roman antiquities at Szombathely Castle
during the 15th century. Maximilian I of Austria

acquired a collection for his castle in Vienna. Samples
of both scienti c material and art were featured in the
“green vaults” of the Dresden palace of Augustus of
Saxony, while the archduke Ferdinand of Tirol housed
a varied collection that included Benin ivories and
Chinese paintings at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck.
Other notable central European collections included
those of the Holy Roman emperor Rudolf II at Prague
and of Albert V, duke of Bavaria, who from 1563 to 1571
East (at right) and (left) west wings of the had buildings designed and erected to house his
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, with the Palazzo
Vecchio in the background collections in Munich. The collection of the Polish king
The J. Allan Cash Photolibrary, London Sigismund II Augustus was housed at Wawel Castle,
Kraków.
Royal patronage was crucial to the encouragement of the arts at this time. Rudolf II
sponsored astrologers and alchemists as well as artists. Francis I of France invited famed
French and Italian craftsmen and artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, to rebuild and
embellish his château at Fontainebleau, and there he kept his outstanding collection of
art. In England Henry VIII gave his attention to music and thus did not form a collection of
signi cance. He was responsible, however, for the appointment in 1533 of a King’s
Antiquary, whose task was to list and describe the antiquities of the country. (Similar
appointments were made subsequently by the Habsburg monarchs and by King Gustav II
Adolf of Sweden.) It was not until the 17th century that the rst important royal collection
was formed in England by Charles I, only to be much dispersed after his execution in 1649.
Following the Restoration, Charles II also maintained a collection, but this was lost in a re
at Whitehall Palace in 1698. Early in the reign of Charles II, displays of arms and armour
were being prepared at the Tower of London; clearly intended for the public bene t, these
displays marked an important step in the development of a museum of the Royal
Armouries.
Specialized personal collections
The developing interest in human as well as natural history in the 16th century led to the
creation of specialized collections. In Italy alone more than 250 natural history collections
are recorded in that century, including the ne herbarium of Luca Ghini at Padua and the
more eclectic collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi at Bologna. Other notable natural history
collections of the time elsewhere in Europe were those of Conrad Gesner, Félix Platter,
and, a little later, the John Tradescants, father and son. Among the specialized historical
collections were those of portraits of great men assembled by Paolo Giovio at Como, the
archaeological collection of the Grimani family of Venice, and the ne collection of
illuminated manuscripts gathered by Sir Robert Cotton in England. A number of the latter
had been acquired from monasteries closed during the Reformation. In due time these
various collections found their way into museums. So did the collections of Ferrante
Imperato of Naples, Bernard Paludanus (Berant ten Broecke) of Amsterdam, and Ole
Worm of Copenhagen.
A collection such as these was normally known as a cabinet in 16th-century England and
France, while in German-speaking Europe the equivalents Kammer or Kabinett were
used. Greater precision was sometimes applied, the terms Kunstkammer and
Rüstkammer, for example, referring respectively to a collection of art and a collection of
historical objects or armour. Natural specimens were to be found in a Wunderkammer or
Naturalienkabinett. In England the term gallery, borrowed from Italian galleria, referred
to a place where paintings and sculpture were exhibited. One Italian collection of natural
specimens was called a museo naturale.
In 1565 Samuel van Quicheberg published a work on the nature of collections, advocating
that they represent a systematic classi cation of all materials in the universe. His view
re ects a spirit of system and rational inquiry that had begun to emerge in Europe.
Collections of natural and arti cial objects were to play an important part in this
movement. This can be seen in antiquarian studies, in the work of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de
Peiresc at Aix-en-Provence in France early in the 17th century, for example, or in the
classi cation of the plant and animal kingdoms by Carolus Linnaeus a century later. For
the less-specialized collector, works such as Museographia, by Casper F. Neickel
(pseudonym of Kaspar Friedrich Jenequel), published at Leipzig in 1727, were generally
available to aid in classi cation, care of a collection, and the identi cation of potential
sources from which collections might be developed.
Collections of learned societies
Another product of the age was the learned society, many of which were established to
promote corporate discussion, experimentation, and collecting. Some commenced as
early as the 16th century. Better-known societies, however, date from later years; examples
are the Royal Society in London (1660) and the Academy of Sciences in Paris (1666). By the
turn of the century, organizations covering other subject areas were being established,
among them the Society of Antiquaries of London (1707), and learned societies were also
appearing in provincial towns. This was the beginning of a movement that, through the
collections formed and the promotion of their subjects, contributed much to the
formation of museums in the modern meaning of the term.
Toward the modern museum
From private collection to public exhibition
Many private Renaissance collections were symbols of social prestige and served as an
important element in the traditions of the nobility and the ruling families, but over time a
developing spirit of inquiry brought to collecting a different meaning and purpose as well
as a much wider group of practitioners. These new collectors, concerned with enjoyment
and study and the advancement of knowledge, while equally concerned with the
continuity of their collections, had no such guarantee of succession. If this guarantee could
not be found in the family unit, then the route of succession had to be found elsewhere,
and the corporate unit provided greater security. Furthermore, if knowledge were to have
lasting signi cance, it had to be transmitted in the public domain. It is the transferral of
collections from the private to the public domain that is the subject of this section.
Public collections
The earliest recorded instance of a public body receiving a private collection occurs in the
16th century with the bequest of Domenico Cardinal Grimani to the Venetian republic in
1523, to be supplemented in 1583 with a further bequest from the Grimani family. The
motivation seems to have been both to promote scholarship and to grace the seat of
government. At the time of the Reformation in Switzerland, material was transferred from
ecclesiastical establishments to the authorities of Zürich and other municipalities,
eventually forming important components of their museums. The city of Basel, concerned
that the ne cabinet of Basilius Amerbach might be exported, purchased it in 1662 and
nine years later arranged for its display in the university library. In 1694 the head abbot of
Saint-Vincent-de-Besançon in France bequeathed his collection of paintings and
medallions to the abbey to form a public collection. To some extent the emerging learned
societies also were becoming repositories for such collections, in addition to developing
their own. In the case of Ole Worm’s collection, as in other cases, lack of interest among
the owner’s family after his death resulted in the transfer of the collection in 1655 to the
royal cabinet in Copenhagen.
The rst public museums
The Ashmolean
The rst corporate body to receive a private collection, erect a building to house it, and
make it publicly available was the University of Oxford. The gift was from Elias Ashmole;
containing much of the Tradescant collection, it was made on the condition that a place
be built to receive it. The resulting building, which eventually became known as the
Ashmolean Museum, opened in 1683. (The Ashmolean later moved to another new
building nearby, and its original building is now occupied by the Museum of the History of
Science.)
The British Museum
The 18th century saw the owering of the Enlightenment and the encyclopaedic spirit, as
well as a growing taste for the exotic. These in uences, encouraged by increasing world
exploration, by trade centred on northwestern Europe, and by developing industrialization,
are evident in the opening of two of Europe’s outstanding museums, the British Museum,
in London, in 1759 and the Louvre Museum, in Paris, in 1793. The British Museum was
formed as the result of the government’s acceptance of responsibility to preserve and
maintain three collections “not only for the inspection and entertainment of the learned
and the curious, but for the general use and bene t of the public.” These were housed at
Montagu House, in Bloomsbury, specially purchased for this purpose. The collections had
been made by Sir Robert Cotton, Robert Harley, 1st earl of Oxford, and Sir Hans Sloane. The
Cotton and Harley collections were composed mainly of manuscripts; since 1998 these
have been housed in a separate building, the British Library. The Sloane collection,
however, included his specimens of natural history from Jamaica and classical,
ethnographic, numismatic, and art material, as well as the cabinet of William Courten,
comprising some 100,000 items in all. Although public access to the British Museum was
free of charge from the outset, for many years admission was by application for one of the
limited number of tickets issued daily. Despite this, François de la Rochefoucauld, visiting
from France in 1784, observed with approval that the museum was expressly “for the
instruction and grati cation of the public.”
British Museum
The Louvre
British Museum, London. It was a matter of public concern in France that the royal
© Edmund Chai/Shutterstock.com
collections were inaccessible to the populace, and eventually a
selection of paintings was exhibited at the Luxembourg Palace
in 1750 by Louis XV. Continuing pressure, including Diderot’s proposal of a national
museum, led to arrangements for more of the royal collection to be displayed for the
public in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre palace. However, when the Grande Galerie was
opened to the public in 1793, it was by decree of the Revolutionary government rather
than royal mandate, and it was called the Central Museum of the Arts. There were many
dif culties, and the museum was not fully accessible until 1801. The collection at the
Louvre grew rapidly, not least because the National Convention instructed Napoleon to
appropriate works of art during his European campaigns; as a result, many royal and noble
collections were transported to Paris to be shown at what became known as the Musée
Napoléon. The return to its owners of this looted material was required by the Congress of
Vienna in 1815. Nevertheless, the Napoleonic episode awakened a new interest in art and
provided the impetus that made a number of collections available to the public.
Louvre Museum, Paris, with pyramid

Museums in Rome and the Vatican
designed by I.M. Pei.
The extensive collections of the Vatican also saw
© Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
considerable reorganization during the 18th century.
The Capitoline Museum (now comprising several buildings and called the Capitoline
Museums) was opened to the public in 1734, and the Palazzo dei Conservatori was
converted to a picture gallery in 1749. The Pio-Clementino Museum, now part of the
museum complex in Vatican City, opened in 1772 to house an extensive collection of
antiquities. The Neoclassical architecture of this building set a standard that was emulated
in a number of European countries for half a century.
Other European collections
By this time a number of new collections were available to the

Prado Museum
public in Europe. Many of these resulted from royal and noble
Prado Museum, Madrid.
patronage, while others were created on the initiative of public
© SeanPavonePhoto/iStock.com
authorities. The Prado Museum in Madrid dates from 1785, when
Charles III commissioned the erection of a new building to serve
Alte Pinakothek
as a museum of natural science. Construction was interrupted
Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
by the Napoleonic Wars, and when the building opened in 1819 it
Markus Würfel
instead housed an art gallery to display part of the royal
collection. In Prussia Frederick William III had a picture gallery
built in Berlin to house some of his collection, and the gallery was opened to the public in
1830. This was the beginning of a remarkable complex that developed over the next
century to house various portions of the national collection on a single site, now known as
the Museuminsel. Another development in Germany was the erection of the Alte
Pinakothek (1836) at Munich to display the painting collections of the dukes of
Wittelsbach. This building was designed to exacting standards by Leo von Klenze, who was
also responsible for the New Hermitage, one of the ve buildings of the Hermitage in St.
Petersburg, where in 1852 Nicholas I made available to the public the major art collection
of the Russian tsars. The Royal Museums in Brussels originated by royal warrant in 1835 in
the interests of historical study and the arts. In the Netherlands a national art gallery was
opened at the Huis ten Bosch in 1800; it was later moved to Amsterdam and eventually
became the Rijksmuseum (State Museum). The National Gallery in London, founded on
the personal collection of the merchant and philanthropist John Julius Angerstein,
opened initially at Angerstein’s house in 1824. In 1838 it moved to purpose-built premises
on Trafalgar Square.
The spread of the European model
Before the end of the 18th century the phenomenon of the museum had spread to other
parts of the world. In 1773 in the United States the Charleston Library Society of South
Carolina announced its intention of forming a museum. Its purpose was to promote the
better understanding of agriculture and herbal medicine in the area. Another early
institution, the Peale Museum, was opened in 1786 in Philadelphia by the painter Charles
Willson Peale. The collections rapidly outgrew the space available in his home and were
displayed for a time at Independence Hall. After a number of vicissitudes the collections
were nally dispersed in the middle of the 19th century, but not before the ne Chinese
collection had formed a major exhibition in London.
European colonial in uence was responsible for the appearance of museums elsewhere.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, the collection of the Batavia Society of Arts and Science was begun
in 1778, eventually to become the Central Museum of Indonesian Culture and nally part
of the National Museum. The origins of the Indian Museum in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta)
were similar, based on the collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which commenced
in 1784. In South America a number of national museums originated in the early 19th
century: the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires was founded in 1812,
and Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, which owes its origin to a selection of
paintings presented by John VI, exiled king of Portugal, was opened to the public in 1818 (a
re destroyed much of the collection in 2018). Among others are the National Museum in
Bogotá, Colombia (1824), and the national museums of natural history in Santiago, Chile
(1830), and Montevideo, Uruguay (1837). In Canada the zoological collection of the Pictou
Academy in Nova Scotia (founded in 1816) was probably opened to the public by 1822. In
South Africa a museum based on the zoological collection of Andrew (later Sir Andrew)
Smith was founded in Cape Town in 1825. It is likely that an amateur naturalist and
diplomat, Alexander Macleay, was responsible for the initiatives that led to the opening in
1829 of what was to become the Australian Museum in Sydney.
Indian Museum
Museums and national identity
Courtyard of the Indian Museum, By the early 19th century, then, the granting of public
Kolkata, India.
access to formerly private collections had become
Michael Janich
more common. What followed for approximately the
next 100 years was the founding, by regional and
national authorities throughout the world, of museums expressly intended for the public
good.
Central Europe
Contributing to the establishment of museums in the early 19th century was a developing
national consciousness, particularly among the peoples of central Europe. In 1807 the
National Assembly of Hungary founded a national museum at Pest from collections given
to the nation ve years earlier by Count Ferenc Széchenyi. In Prague the natural history
collections of the counts of Sternberg and other noble families were formed into a
museum and opened in 1823 with the intention of promoting national identity. The
Moravian Museum in Brno opened in 1817, and others followed at Zagreb and Ljubljana in
1821. At the centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Vienna, the imperial collections
acted as the national museum; regional museums were formed at Graz, Innsbruck, and
Salzburg during the period 1811–34. In Nürnberg the Germanisches Nationalmuseum was
directed by a proponent of a uni ed Germany, Hans von Aufsess, and by mid-century

most of the German states had a museum. Farther north, in Poland, a national museum,
although conceived in 1775, was not established until 1862, but Princess Izabella
Czartoryska maintained a museum in the castle park at Puławy, near Warsaw, for eight
years at the beginning of the 19th century, and two private collections were opened to the
public at about the same time in Wilanów and Warsaw.
Museums of antiquities
Increasing interest in antiquities led to the excavation of local archaeological sites and had
an impact on museum development. In the years 1806–26, in Russian lands to the north of
the Black Sea, four archaeological museums were opened, at Feodosiya, Kerch, Nikolayev,
and Odessa (all now located in Ukraine). The Museum of Northern Antiquities was opened
in Copenhagen in 1819 (it was there that its rst director, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen,
developed the three-part system of classifying prehistory into the Stone, Bronze, and Iron
ages). This museum was merged with three others (of ethnography, antiquities, and
numismatics) in 1892 to form the National Museum of Denmark. In France the Museum of
National Antiquities opened at Saint-Germain-en-Laye late in the 18th century. It still acts
as a national archaeological repository, as does the State Historical Museum in Stockholm,
which houses material recovered as early as the 17th century. The national archaeological
museum in Greece was started at Aeginia in 1829. Certain European countries, however—
the United Kingdom and Germany, for example—do not have well-developed national
collections of antiquities, and as a result regional museums in those countries are the
richer.
In uence of industry and science

In Britain, social reforms to overcome problems resulting from industrialization
contributed to the development of municipal museums. The support of museums by local
authorities was seen as a means of providing both instruction and entertainment to the
increasingly urbanized population and became the subject of special legislation in 1845.
Museums were also viewed as a vehicle for promoting industrial design and scienti c and
technical achievement. Such promotion was the motivation behind the precursor of the
Victoria and Albert Museum (for decorative arts) and the Science Museum, both in South
Kensington, London; the founding collections were acquired from the Great Exhibition of
1851—the rst of the world’s fairs. International exhibitions have contributed signi cantly
to the formation of a number of museums since then, including the Technical Museum of
Industry and Trade in Vienna and the Palace of Discovery in Paris.
The United States
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., came into existence through the
remarkable bequest of nearly one-half million dollars from James Smithson, an
Englishman. He wished to see established in the United States an institution “for the
increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” In 1846 the U.S. Congress accepted his
bequest and passed legislation establishing the Smithsonian as an institution charged
with representing “all objects of art and…curious research…natural history, plants, and
geological and mineralogical specimens” belonging to the United States. The U.S. National
Museum opened in 1858 as part of the Smithsonian’s scienti c program and formed the
rst of its many museums, most of which stand along the Mall in Washington, D.C.
The rst of the historic house museums to be

Smithsonian Institution
developed by a local society (a type characteristic of
The Smithsonian Institution's first
building, known as the Castle, was the United States) was Hasbrouck House at
completed in 1855. Newburgh, New York, which had served as the nal
© Wangkun Jia/Dreamstime.com headquarters of George Washington during the
American Revolution. The purchase of the house by
the state of New York in 1850 established another precedent, whereby public authorities
provide and maintain museum buildings while a body of trustees assumes responsibility
for the collections and staff. Two other well-known museums, both in New York City,
provide examples of this system: the American Museum of Natural History, founded in
1869, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, opened in 1870.
Other national and regional museums
The middle of the 19th century saw the establishment of a number of other well-known
museums. In Canada the collection of the National Museum commenced in 1843 in
Montreal as part of the Geological Survey, while the precursor of the Royal Ontario
Museum in Toronto, the Ontario Provincial Museum, was founded in 1855. In Australia the
National Museum of Victoria was established at Melbourne in 1854; it was followed by the
National Gallery of Victoria in 1861 and the Science Museum of Victoria in 1870. In Cairo the
Egyptian Museum was established in 1858. These all followed the European model, and
even in South America art collections tended to be predominately of European origin, to
the neglect of indigenous works of art.
Royal Ontario Museum

The rst museum boom
Royal Ontario Museum entrance hall, Europe
Ontario, Canada.
© Yelena Rodriguez/Dreamstime.com It was during the second half of the 19th century that
museums began to proliferate in Europe; civic pride
and the free education movement were among the causes of this development. About
100 opened in Britain in the 15 years before 1887; some 50 museums were established in
Germany in the ve years from 1876 to 1880; and, with the opening of the magni cent
Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 1891, most of the imperial Habsburg collections
were nally housed and displayed in one place. This was also a period of innovation. The
Liverpool Museums in England, for example, began circulating specimens to schools for
educational purposes; panoramas and habitat groups were used to facilitate
interpretation. As rst gas lighting and then electric lighting became available, museums
extended their hours into the evenings to provide service to those unable to visit during
the day.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,

South America
Austria.
The increase in the number of museums was not,
© krasnevsky/Fotolia
however, a peculiarity of Europe or North America. In
South America particularly, new museums were
founded both in the capital cities and in the provinces. Some of these were provided by
universities, as in the case of the Geological Museum in Lima, Peru (1891), or the
Geographical and Geological Museum at São Paulo, Brazil (1895). Others were created by
provincial bodies: the regional museums at Córdoba (1887) and Gualeguaychu (1898), both
in Argentina, and at Ouro Prêto, Brazil (1876); the Hualpen Museum in Chile (1882); and the
Municipal Museum and Library at Guayaquil, Ecuador (1862). New specialist national
museums also appeared in certain countries, while at Tigre, in Argentina, a maritime
museum was founded in 1892. Early in the following century, memorial museums were
created, including those dedicated to Bartolomé Mitre, a former president of Argentina, in
Buenos Aires (1906) and to Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela (1911).
Asia
By this time the Indian Museum, in Kolkata, and what is now the National Museum, in
Jakarta, were well-established institutions in Asia, but a number of new museums were
appearing as well. In Japan a museum to encourage industry and the development of
natural resources was opened in 1872; this provided the basis for the present-day Tokyo
National Museum and National Science Museum (also in Tokyo). Although some learned-
society museums existed in China in the late 19th century, the rst museum in the strict
sense of the word was the Nantong Museum in Jiangsu province, founded in 1905, to be
followed within a decade by the National Museum of Chinese History in Beijing (the
museum merged with the Museum of the Chinese Revolution in 2003 to create the
National Museum of China) and the Beijiang Museum in Tianjin (now Tianjin Natural
History Museum). The collections established in the Grand Palace at Bangkok in 1874
eventually became the Bangkok National Museum. The National Museum of Sri Lanka, in
Colombo, opened to the public in 1877; the Sarawak Museum (now in Malaysia) opened in
1891; and the Peshawar Museum, in Pakistan, opened in 1907.
Tokyo National Museum

Africa
Tokyo National Museum. In central and southern Africa, museums were founded early in
PHG
the 20th century. Zimbabwe’s national museums at Bulawayo and
Harare (then known as Salisbury) were founded in 1901, the

Uganda Museum originated in 1908 from collections assembled by the British District
Commissioners, and the National Museum of Kenya (now part of the National Museums of
Kenya) in Nairobi was commenced by the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society
in 1909. Mozambique’s rst museum, the Alvaro de Castro Natural History Museum in
Maputo, was founded in 1913. Meanwhile in North Africa the Egyptian Museum in Cairo
(founded 1835) had been relocated to its new building in 1902, and certain of the
collections had been transferred to form two new institutions: the Museum of Islamic Art
(1903) and the Coptic Museum (1908). In South Africa there was steady museum
development in a number of the provinces—for example, in Grahamstown (1837), Port
Elizabeth (1856), Bloemfontein (1877), Durban (1887), Pretoria (1893), and Pietermaritzburg
(1903).
The 20th and 21st centuries
Early period of reassessment

The rst half of the 20th century saw the profound social consequences of the two World
Wars, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and periods of economic recession. For museums in
Europe this was a period of major reassessment. Governments, professional associations,
and other organizations reviewed the role of museums in a changing society and made a
number of suggestions to improve their service to the public. In some countries new
approaches were developed, in others museums continued to re ect their diverse
ancestry, and some decades were to pass before resources generally became available for
the implementation of major changes.
Change was notably radical in Russia, where collections and museums were brought
under state control following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Vladimir Lenin’s belief that
culture was for the people and his efforts to preserve the country’s cultural heritage led to
a trebling of the number of museums in 20 years. Not only was much of the country’s
artistic, historic, and scienti c heritage brought together in museums, but other types of
museums emerged as well. Particular attention was given to amassing material related to
Russia’s three revolutions. The earliest museum to result from such collections opened in
1919 in the Winter Palace at Petrograd (St. Petersburg); after 1924 the Central Museum of
the Revolution in Moscow became the focal point for these collections. Another type was
the memorial museum housing the personal effects of well-known gures. Sometimes, as
with the Central Lenin Museum in Moscow (1936–93), they were means of communicating
political propaganda.
In Germany a large number of regional museums were established after World War I to
promote the history and important gures of the homeland, and they undoubtedly
encouraged the nationalistic tendencies that led to the Nazi era.
In the main, however, museums were not well organized to meet changing social
conditions. In Britain a diversity of providers—government at both national and local levels,
universities, societies, companies, and individuals—did not encourage cohesive policy
making at a national level. In central Europe associations attempted to develop and run
individual museums, but they were unable to provide the necessary resources. Outside
Europe the in uence of social change was less marked, and there was little evidence that
museums were being organized as a national force. In the United States museum
development was in uenced by a desire to establish a coherent past—a movement that
was widely encouraged through private patronage.
In the industrialized world new types of museums appeared. Some nations made
conscious attempts to preserve and display structures and customs of their more recent
past. Examples, following Sweden’s pioneering re-erection of signi cant buildings, include
the open-air museums at Arnhem, Netherlands (Netherlands Open Air Museum; opened
1912), and at St. Fagans, Wales (the Museum of Welsh Life; opened as the Welsh Folk
Museum in 1948). The preservation and restoration of buildings or entire settlements in
situ also began; particularly well known is Colonial Williamsburg, founded in Virginia in
1926. A new type of science museum also emerged, in which static displays of scienti c
instruments and equipment were replaced with demonstrations of the applications of
science. London’s Science Museum, founded in 1857, eventually was moved to specially
built premises in 1919 and is now one of three museums that constitute the National
Museum of Science and Industry. Similarly, the Deutsches Museum (German Museum) in
Munich was transferred to new premises in 1925, and its growth continued throughout the
century. Both established worldwide reputations for excellence in interpreting science and
technology for the general public.
Post-World War II era
Museums and the public

The years immediately following World War II were a period of remarkable achievement
for museums. This was re ected both in international and national policy and in the
individual museums as they responded to a rapidly changing, better-educated society.
Museums became an educational facility, a source of leisure activity, and a medium of
communication. Their strength lay in the fact that they were repositories of the “real
thing,” which—unlike the surrounding world of plastics, reproduced images, and a
deteriorating natural and human environment—could inspire and invoke a sense of
wonder, reality, stability, and even nostalgia.
In Europe particularly there was a period of postwar reconstruction. Many art treasures
had been removed to places of safety during the war, and they now had to be recovered
and redisplayed; buildings also had to be refurbished. In some cases museums and their
collections had been destroyed; in others collections had been looted (though in some
cases restitution followed). Reconstruction provided opportunities for the realization of

some of the ideas that had been advanced earlier in the century. A new approach
emerged in which curators in the larger museums became members of a team
comprising scientists as conservators, designers to assist in exhibition work, educators to
develop facilities for both students and the public, information scientists to handle the
scienti c data inherent in collections, and even marketing managers to promote the
museum and its work. There was a perceptible shift from serving the scholar, as be ts an
institution holding much of the primary evidence of the material world, to providing for a
lay public as well. As a result of such innovations, museums found a new popularity and
attracted an increasing number of visitors. Many of the visitors were tourists, and
governments, particularly in certain European countries, soon acknowledged the
contribution of museums to the economy.
Statistics from the United States give an indication of the increase in the number of
museums and in museum visiting. Of some 16,000 museums reported in the early 21st
century, almost 90 percent had been founded since 1950 and more than 70 percent since
1970. According to the American Alliance of Museums, American museums had nearly 850
million visits in 2008; in 1988 the recorded gure was 566 million. Some of the oldest
established museums in Europe—such as the British Museum, the Louvre, and the
Hermitage—each regularly attract more than 5 million visitors a year. Some science and
technology museums are even more popular.
Museums and the environment
Among other factors that have contributed to the development of museums since the
mid-20th century is an increased awareness of the environment and the need to preserve
it. Many sites of scienti c signi cance have been preserved and interpreted, sometimes
under the aegis of a national park service, and historic sites and buildings have been
restored, the latter sometimes being used as museums. This has led to the development
of historic and natural landscapes as museums, such as the renovation of Mystic Seaport
in Connecticut as a maritime museum, the use of Ironbridge Gorge as a museum to
interpret the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in England, and the restoration of the
walled medieval cities at Suzdal and Vladimir in Russia. In Australia the heyday of the gold
rush has been re-created in the form of the Sovereign Hill Historical Park, at the gold-
mining town of Ballarat. Gorée Island, off the Senegal coast, served as a major entrepôt for
the Atlantic slave trade and has been restored as a historic site with a number of
supporting museums.
A related development is the ecomuseum, such as the

Vladimir-Monastery of Our Savior and
St. Euthymius Ecomuseum of the Urban Community at Le Creusot–
Cathedral of the Transfiguration and Montceau-les-Mines in France. There a bold

belfry of the Monastery of Our Savior and experiment involves the community as a whole, rather
St. Euthymius, one of the White
Monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal, in than specialists, in interpreting the human and
Suzdal, Vladimir oblast, Russia.
natural environment, thereby generating a better
Datateddy
understanding among its inhabitants of the reasons
for cultural, social, and environmental change. Some
of these projects have involved the acquisition and preservation of massive artifacts, but
perhaps no undertaking has been as spectacular as the recovery from the seabed of ships
such as the Song dynasty ship from Quanzhou, the Vasa, the Mary Rose, and the
Hanseatic cog from Bremerhaven; all these vessels are now preserved in museums in
China, Sweden, England, and Germany, respectively.
Museums and public nance
Contemporary museum development has been much in uenced by changing policies in

public sector nance. In many countries the contribution of public funds to museums has
remained static or has fallen, so that museums’ governing bodies and directors have had
to seek funding from alternative sources. This has not only affected the way museums are
organized but also accentuated the need for marketing and fund-raising expertise. Thus,
with Russian state museums having acquired greater budgetary autonomy since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg has drawn on international
expertise and nancing to conduct major renewal work. In the United Kingdom the
National Museum of Arms and Armour raised substantial funding from the private sector
to build its new Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds; in addition, it established a public
company to operate the museum after it opened in 1996.
Hermitage
New museums and collections
Interior of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Despite constraints in public funding, governments
©Olgavolodina/Dreamstime.com were not inactive in the second half of the 20th
century. In 1982, for instance, Australia opened its
National Gallery of Art in Canberra. Also in Australia the National Gallery of Victoria was
developed as part of Melbourne’s arts complex, while Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum
(1988) introduced a major attraction in that city. In Paris the Pompidou Centre (1977)
brought together several public collections of modern art that had been previously held
across a number of galleries. In addition to housing a collection of modern art, the
building also offers space for special exhibitions and other cultural activities. In an effort to
enlarge its capacity, the Louvre renovated its building and added the now iconic glass
pyramid entrance to the museum in the late 1980s and early ’90s. The Museum of London,
amalgamating the collections of two previous museums, was established in 1975 to tell the
story of the capital and its immediate environs. In 1964 the National Museum of
Anthropology, just one of a ne complex of museums in Mexico City, opened a
magni cent building to display the country’s archaeological richness. The Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, D.C., added the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in
1974 and the National Air and Space Museum in 1976. Among several architecturally
notable museums are the Canadian Museum of Civilization (1989; now Canadian Museum
of History) at Hull, Quebec, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997) in Bilbao, Spain.
Many buildings of historical signi cance were adapted

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, by
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, 1971– to house museums. Examples include the Musée
77. d’Orsay, formerly a major railroad station in Paris,
Alex Bartel—Science Source/Photo
which was reopened in 1986 as a national museum of
Researchers, Inc.
the 19th century, and Tate Modern (2000), an art
museum housed in a refurbished power station on
the South Bank in London. Other buildings and building sites of historical and cultural
signi cance have themselves become museums.
The museum-building impulse was not restricted to industrialized countries. For example,
a desire to preserve their local history led many Caribbean islands to establish small
museums, and several African states gave high priority to the provision of museums. In
Nigeria, for instance, museums were established in all the principal cities by its National
Museums and Monuments Commission to assist in developing cultural identity and to
promote national unity. The Jos Museum, one of the earliest of these, also administers a
museum of traditional buildings, while others developed workshops where traditional
crafts could be demonstrated. Crafts are also a feature of the National Museum in Niamey,
Niger, and products of these workshops are exported to Europe and North America.
Following the success of Guggenheim Bilbao, eye-

Milwaukee Art Museum
catching buildings seemed to become the norm for
Quadracci Pavilion (2001), an addition to
the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, cultural institutions at the beginning of the 21st
designed by Santiago Calatrava. century, especially as museums recognized the need
AdstockRF to compete for audience attention in the advent of
new media and entertainment. Visitor experience
Tate Modern increasingly became a priority. Public programming,
The Switch House (2016), an addition to including lectures, concerts, and exercise sessions,
Tate Modern, London, designed by expanded, as did the need for additional public spaces
Herzog & de Meuron.
for gathering, dining, and retail. Many established
View Pictures/Richard Chivers/VIEW/Newscom
museums commissioned additions in the 21st century
not necessarily for the display of objects but to
accommodate changing visitor demands. The Quadracci Pavilion, Santiago Calatrava’s
addition for the Milwaukee Art Museum, includes an exhibition space, but it primarily
houses an entrance hall, auditorium, gift shop, and two cafes. The Switch House, Herzog &
de Meuron’s addition (2016) for Tate Modern, designates only 40 percent of its space for
the display of art.
As museums contended with changing visitor needs

Washington, D.C.: National Museum
of African American History and in the early 21st century, they also attempted to move
Culture; Washington Monument away from what had come to be seen as outdated
The National Museum of African Eurocentric displays and the exclusionary practices of
American History and Culture (left) and
the past, a shift that had begun in the previous
the Washington Monument (right),
Washington, D.C. century. Two museums constructed in the late 2010s—
Alan Karchmer/NMAAHC the Louvre Abu Dhabi (2017), a Louvre outpost in the
United Arab Emirates, and the Smithsonsian’s
Nouvel, Jean: Louvre Abu Dhabi National Museum of African American History and
Culture (2016; NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C.—
The Louvre Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirates, designed by Jean Nouvel. demonstrated differing approaches for representing
© Louvre Abu Dhabi; photography, Roland often marginalized cultures. The NMAAHC promoted a
Halbe
multiculturalist route, providing an exclusive space for
African Americans to tell their history and to promote
their customs. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, on the other
hand, advanced a holistic plan, wherein the arts of all civilizations are displayed together
around a theme or era so that each culture has an equal platform. Some scholars,
however, acknowledge that neither method fully resolves the problem: the multicultural
method practiced by the NMAAHC has been criticized for maintaining the self-other
dichotomy of the colonial period, while the thematic narrative of the Louvre Abu Dhabi
has long been criticized for downplaying unsavory events of history, notably eras of
colonialism and slavery, to mere episodes in the great scheme of human existence.
Types of museums
Given their diverse origins, varying philosophies, and differing roles in society, museums
do not lend themselves to rigid classi cation. Certain museums provide for a specialist
audience—for example, children, societies, universities, or schools. Some have particular
responsibilities for a de ned geographic area, such as a city or region. Other museums—
especially ones where the primary ethos is nationalistic, religious, or political—may offer
unusual perspectives, resulting in alternative interpretations of artistic, historical, or
scienti c collections.
Sometimes museums are classi ed according to the

Louvre
source of their funding (e.g., state, municipal, private),
Interior of the Louvre Museum, Paris.
particularly in statistical work. Classifying by source of
© S. Duffett/Shutterstock.com
funding, however, fails to indicate the true character of
the museums’ collections. For example, institutions
funded by the national government—national museums—may hold outstanding
international collections, as do the British Museum, the Hermitage, and the Louvre; they
may hold specialized collections, as do a number of the national museums of antiquities
on the European continent; or these may have an essentially local character, as does the
Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in Washington, D.C.
An analysis of museums based on the nature of their collections, although it fails to

indicate disparities of scale and quality, does have the merit of distinguishing between
general and specialized museums. In addition, by emphasizing collections, this method
focuses on the very raison d’être of museums. In this article, museums are classi ed into
ve basic types—general, natural history and natural science, science and technology,
history, and art. A more recent kind of museum—the virtual museum—transcends all
other types by virtue of its unique electronic presentation and is discussed as well.
General museums
General museums hold collections in more than one subject and are therefore sometimes
known as multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary museums. Many were founded in the 18th,
19th, or early 20th century. Most originated in earlier private collections and re ected the
encyclopaedic spirit of the times. Certain general museums re ect the in uence of
cultural contact made through trade. Some museums hold a number of important
specialized collections that would qualify them to be grouped in more than one category
of specialization. This is true particularly of many of the large general museums, which
may have collections in one or more elds equal to if not exceeding both the quantity and
quality of material exhibited in a specialized museum. Some national museums display
general collections within their main building; indeed, many commenced in this fashion,
but the necessity of nding additional space later caused a division of the collections and
encouraged the growth of specialized museums.
Most common among general museums are those which serve a region or a locality. Many
of these owe their foundation to civic pride and a desire to promote knowledge of the
area. They are widespread in eastern and western Europe and are found as well in India,
Australia, New Zealand, and North and South America. Their prime responsibility is to
re ect the natural and human history, traditions, and creative spirit of the area. In many
cases the community thus served is culturally homogeneous. Where it is not, the museum
may develop speci c programs to foster mutual understanding among the diverse
peoples. In cities that have a sizable immigrant population, such as, for example, Bradford
or Leicester in England, the regional museum has engaged actively in such work.
Sometimes special exhibitions prepared by the national museum or other agencies
provide opportunities at regional museums for the community to appreciate the wider
aspects of the national or even international heritage.
The general museum, particularly at the regional or local

Kinsale Regional Museum
level, faces severe problems because of the high cost of
Kinsale Regional Museum, Ireland.
employing the large numbers of specialists necessary to
Peter Clarke
care for the variety of collections involved, particularly if a
strong research program is maintained. In some museums

research has diversi ed as curators, particularly in archaeology, history, and the natural
sciences, have become involved in recording the environment of an area or in preparing
data banks in order to advise planners and developers who are considering projects to be
conducted on sites of scienti c or historical interest. Other general museums have
maintained their more traditional roles but have concentrated their efforts on public
services, as at the Kanazawa Bunko Museum in Yokohama, Japan, where a
multidisciplinary approach is apparent in its exhibitions. Among other developments
fostered by many regional and local museums are the erection of on-site museums to
interpret archaeological or natural features; the provision of heritage centres, particularly
in urban areas, to tell the story of an aspect of the historic environment; or, as an
extramural activity of the museum, the development of heritage and nature trails.
Certain museums provide for a particular audience, often acquiring general collections to
suit the purpose. One of these is the children’s museum (also frequented by adults), which
routinely now features interactive exhibits. Notable examples include the Brooklyn
Children’s Museum in New York City, the Children’s Museum in Boston, the enormous
Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in Indiana (situated on a 29-acre [12-hectare] campus
and attracting more than one million visitors annually), and the National Children’s
Museum of New Delhi. At the opposite end of the spectrum are museums devoted to
esoterica, designed for the specialist, or museums founded exclusively for an adult
audience, such as the Museum of Sex, which opened to much controversy in New York
City in 2002.
Natural history and natural science museums
Museums of natural history and natural science are concerned with the natural world;
their collections may contain specimens of birds, mammals, insects, plants, rocks,
minerals, and fossils. These museums have their origins in the cabinets of curiosities built
up by prominent individuals in Europe during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Specimens from the natural world were also included (albeit as part of an encyclopaedic
collection) in some of the earliest museums: the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, England,
the British Museum in London, and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. With
the development of the natural sciences in the 19th century, museums exhibiting objects
from the natural world ourished and their number multiplied. In the United States and
Latin America their collections often included objects of physical and social anthropology
as well as the natural sciences. Later, natural science museums responded to new trends
of nature conservation and broader environmental matters. Some established programs
for recording biological data for the area they serve, to facilitate environmental planning
(often in conjunction with local planning authorities) and to provide information to assist
in the interpretation of ecological displays.
Major museums, such as the Natural History Museum in London, the Smithsonian
Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City, hold enormous comparative collections from
the natural world, including the type specimens from which species have been named.
Such museums are international centres of taxonomic work and sustain considerable
research programs.
Interior of the Natural History Museum,

Science and technology museums
London.
Museums of science and technology are concerned
© Bruno Medley/Shutterstock.com
with the development and application of scienti c
ideas and instrumentation. Like museums of natural
science and natural history, science museums have their origins in the Enlightenment.
Some of them developed from the collections of learned societies, others from private
collections such as the Teylers Museum at Haarlem, Netherlands, in the 18th century. A
later development in science museums involved the applications of science, so that
museums began to preserve the material evidence of technological as well as scienti c
endeavour. Some science and technology museums concentrate on demonstrating
science and its applications; in these museums the preservation of process is emphasized
over the preservation of objects.
Science museums are particularly popular with

Municipal Astronomical Science Museum
and planetarium at Akashi, Japan children as well as adults and often provide
World Photo/Shostal Associates opportunities for their visitors to participate through
demonstration models and interactive displays. Well-
known examples of these are at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Science Museum
in London, and (of a more specialized nature) the National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, D.C. Other specialized institutions include transport museums, such as the
National Railway Museum in York, England, or the Swiss Transport Museum on the shores
of Lake Lucerne. Of more recent establishment are industrial museums, which often
include a large technical component.
Museums devoted to modern science, such as the

The Air Transportation gallery at the
National Air and Space Museum, Palace of Discovery in Paris, also provide
Washington, D.C. demonstrations of scienti c theory. In India, where
© Richard T. Nowitz
museums of science and technology are seen as
having an important role in education, the National
Council for Science Museums has established a network of such museums across the
country. Performing a similar function are science centres where science is demonstrated
but where there is not normally a responsibility for collecting and conserving historical
apparatus. A pioneer in this eld is the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto.
Some science and technology museums, such as the very popular Museum of Science
and Industry in Chicago or the Technological Museum in Mexico City, are of a more
technical nature. These museums are often sponsored directly or indirectly by industries,
which occasionally found their own museums in order to preserve their heritage and
promote their work. Other museums highlight a speci c product resulting from the
application of science and technology, such as the American Clock & Watch Museum in
Bristol, Connecticut.
American Clock & Watch Museum

History museums
Interior of the American Clock & Watch The term history museum is often used for a wide
Museum, Bristol, Connecticut.
variety of museums where collections are amassed
Courtesy of the American Clock and Watch
Museum; photograph, Mark Sexton and, in most cases, are presented to give a
chronological perspective. Because of the
encompassing nature of history, museums of this type may well hold so many objects of
art and science that they would more properly be called general museums (see above
General museums).
Museums dealing with specialized aspects of history may be found at the national,
provincial, or local level, while museums of general history are rare at the national level.
One example of the latter is the National Museum of History in Chapultepec Castle, Mexico
City. Other national museums of history can be found particularly among newer states,
where they have been used as a means of arousing national consciousness and providing
historical perspective. At the local and regional level there are many examples, of which
the Museum of London and the city museums of Amsterdam, Dresden, Luxembourg, New
York City, Stockholm, and Warsaw are but a few. In many cases, if artifacts are not available
or are inappropriate, curators use reconstructions, models, and graphics, sometimes with
multimedia techniques, to maintain chronological continuity and to increase the
opportunity for interpretation within their essentially didactic approach.
While history museums may include archaeological material, there is nevertheless a

distinctive type that specializes in it: the antiquities museum. Collections of material of the
ancient world can be found in national museums in a number of cities—for example,
Amman, Jordan; Athens; Cairo; Copenhagen; Edinburgh; Madrid; and Mexico City. The
antiquities museum is particularly common in Europe and Asia. Specialized archaeology
museums also are found in areas of rich antiquity or as on-site museums. The archaeology
museum is concerned mainly with historical evidence recovered from the ground and in
many cases provides information on a period for which the written record can make little
or no contribution.
Another specialized form of the history museum

Egyptian Museum
collects and exhibits material from an ethnographic
viewpoint. As the term suggests, emphasis is placed
Entrance hall of the Egyptian Museum, on culture rather than chronology in the presentation
Cairo.
of the collections. A good example of this is the
© Gerard Ducher (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the
American Indian in Washington, D.C. When it opened
in 2004, it was hailed as a unique institution, where in a single museum the cultural life of
the native peoples from all of the Americas—North, Central, and South—would be
researched, analyzed, and celebrated for the public on a scale unmatched by the many
other museums devoted to the Native American. Ethnography museums have been
especially important to the newer nation-states of Africa and Oceania, where they are
seen as a means of contributing to national unity among different cultural groups. Among
the industrialized nations, and particularly in countries that have been involved in
colonization, the ethnography museum traditionally was a museum of the cultures of
other peoples. Many of these institutions were established in the capital cities, which at
the height of colonization were windows on a world otherwise distant and unknown. Thus
were founded the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Man) in Paris, the extensive
ethnographic collections of the British Museum in London, and the Tropenmuseum
(Museum of the Royal Tropical Institute) in Amsterdam. Restructuring of such collections
in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, suggested efforts to move away from the
self-other dichotomy of colonialism. Specialized ethnography museums are also to be
found in provincial cities. Normally, these arose through personal associations, as with the
Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, or because of trade connections, as with the Overseas
Museum in Bremen, Germany, or the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside,
Liverpool, England. The last two examples resulted from proximity to a major international
port.
Many other forms of the cultural history museum exist. Particularly proli c are museums
concerned with preserving urban and rural traditions; these have rapidly increased in
number with the pace of technological progress. Indeed, some history museums are
involved in documenting various material aspects of contemporary life and in the selective
collection of artifacts. Work of this type was pioneered in Sweden, where in 1873 Artur
Hazelius developed the rst museum of traditional life at the Nordic Museum in
Stockholm. This was followed 18 years later by the rst open-air museum, at Skansen.
Museums of both types soon appeared in other countries. The former National Museum of
Popular Arts and Traditions in Paris exempli ed a national approach within a museum
building. The museum’s closure in 2005, however, suggested changing trends in an era of
increased globalization. The Museum of Civilizations from Europe and the Mediterranean
(Mucem) absorbed some of the former museum’s collection and opened in Marseilles,
France, in 2013. It endeavoured to offer a regional, as opposed to national, approach to
cultural history. Outdoor museums preserving traditional architecture, sometimes in situ,
and often demonstrating the activities associated with it, are to be found in many parts of
the world—for example, the National Museum of Niamey, Niger; the Museum of
Traditional Architecture in Jos, Nigeria; the National Village Museum in Bucharest,
Romania; Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg, Ontario; Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia,

U.S.; and the Novgorod State Museum Preserve in Russia.
Individual historic houses have been preserved as

A museum interpreter demonstrating the
18th-century art of wig making at the museums, in some cases because they are typical of
King's Arms Barber Shop, Colonial the period and in other cases because of their
Williamsburg, Virginia, U.S.
associations. Among the latter are the memorial
© Richard T. Nowitz
museums, such as the cottage of Du Fu at Chengdu in
the Chinese province of Sichuan; the Leo Tolstoy
Museum in Moscow; Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home in Virginia; and Paul
Gauguin’s residence in Tahiti, now the Paul Gauguin Museum.
Other museums commemorate events, as do the

Inner court of Paul Gauguin Museum,
Tahiti, French Polynesia Australian War Memorial in Canberra or the Imperial
Shostal Associates War Museum in London; both are military museums,
members of a category that grew after World War I.
Another development in the 20th-century history museum was the maritime museum.
Like other types of museums, it may be housed in historic buildings, as at the National
Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England; in new premises, as in the case of the German
Shipping Museum at Bremerhaven; or in a restored waterfront environment, as at South
Street, New York City.
Another form of history museum is the portrait gallery, in which pictures are collected and
displayed less for aesthetic reasons than for the purpose of communicating the images of
actual persons. Although the idea of a portrait gallery is of some antiquity—a large
collection of portraits of the kings of France and their statesmen was exhibited in Paul
Ardier’s gallery at the Château de Beauregard near Blois in the 1620s, for example—the
national portrait gallery as a public institution is a later development. In a similar vein,
paintings and prints of people, as well as of places and events, often constitute an
important element in other types of history museums.
Art museums
The art museum (called art gallery in some places) is concerned primarily with the object
as a means of unaided communication with its visitors. Aesthetic value is therefore a major
consideration in accepting items for the collection. Traditionally, these collections have
comprised paintings, sculpture, and the decorative arts. A number of art museums have
included the industrial arts since the 19th century, when they were introduced, particularly
to encourage good industrial design. It can be argued that aesthetics have subordinated
function and association to such an extent that objects often are presented in a totally
alien context. In some countries this criticism applies to archaeological material as well.
Prado gallery The display of works of art presents the curator with
Gallery inside the Prado Museum, certain problems. Works of art are exhibited to convey
Madrid.
a visual message. While other disciplines tend to
© rubiphoto/Shutterstock.com
adopt didactic methods of display, the art curator is
concerned particularly with unimpeded presentation
of a given work. The ambience of the work is enhanced by highlighting its form and colour
with proper lighting and background. At one time, arti cial light was preferred for
paintings, both to create an effect and to prevent exposure to harmful elements in natural
light, but it sometimes provides an unnecessarily theatrical presentation or creates an
arti ciality that can inhibit the visitor’s appreciation and enjoyment of the work. Much
greater use is now made of indirect natural light or—as at Tate Britain in London, for
example—a controlled mixture of daylight and simulated daylight. Some art museums
have returned to the earlier custom of hanging paintings in a tiered arrangement in order
to exhibit more of their works.
The search for context has led to the design of period settings in which to present certain
art objects, to the development of furnished period-house museums, and to the
preservation of country houses and other appropriate properties, together with their
contents, in situ. In a specialized context, the restoration of the Moscow Kremlin,
particularly the Great Palace and the churches with their ne murals and icons, provides
an example of this approach. Some of the churches are open to the public as museums.
Some art museums have introduced other visual and performing arts—music, lm, video,
or theatre—to facilitate or enhance interpretation. Artist-in-residence programs also assist
in promoting art and art appreciation. (See Sidebar: Art Appreciation.)
Another factor in the display of art objects concerns their continued preservation. Because
of the sensitivity of some of the materials used in their creation, it is necessary to control
within narrow limits the temperature, humidity, and lighting to which they are exposed. In
addition, sophisticated security precautions are necessary for items of high value.
In many cases, contemporary art is displayed in a separate institution. The role of such
museums is to confront the public with art in the process of development, and there is a
considerable experimental component in their exhibits. This is particularly so at the
Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the museums of
modern art in Stockholm and New York City, where unconventional art forms are
presented. Because of the experimental nature of contemporary art and the high cost
involved in purchases, temporary exhibitions normally play a major role in such museums
and in some cases are their principal activity. Sculpture is often exhibited outdoors, as at
the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Open-Air Museum
in Hakone, Japan, and the Billy Rose Art Garden in Jerusalem.
Virtual museums
A virtual museum is a collection of digitally recorded images, sound les, text documents,
and other data of historical, scienti c, or cultural interest that are accessed through
electronic media. A virtual museum does not house actual objects and therefore lacks the
permanence and unique qualities of a museum in the institutional de nition of the term.
In fact, most virtual museums are sponsored by institutional museums and are directly
dependent upon their existing collections. Nevertheless, through the hyperlinking and
multimedia capabilities available via the Internet, digitized representations can be
brought together from multiple sources for enjoyment and study in a manner largely
determined by the individual user. Virtual museums of this type can be a powerful tool for
comparative study and for research into a particular subject, material, or locality.
Many virtual museums have their roots in a museum’s Web site. At their most basic, these
sites offer administrative information such as opening hours, policies, and services; some
even include a oor plan of the museum. Virtual museums in this limited sense join the
exhibition, the guidebook, the photograph, and the video as a medium for promoting and
interpreting a museum and its collection. But these sites are growing in sophistication.
Many offer “virtual exhibitions”—that is, online tours of certain key exhibits. Still other
museums or administrative organs provide access to databases on collections—for
instance, the Joconde database, maintained by the French Ministry of Culture, from which
information can be obtained on important works of art held by more than one thousand
French museums.
Several institutions collect representations of widely dispersed objects that may or may
not be found in museums. One of the pioneers in this eld was ArtServe, a collection of
thousands of images, particularly of classical art and architecture, made available by the
Australian National University for teachers and students of art history. Virtual museums in
this sense offer the student many bene ts—not least in the selection of material for
detailed study—even though nal recourse may be necessary to the original material.
Virtual museums in the fullest sense of the term consist of collections that take full
advantage of the easy access, loose structure, hyperlinking capacity, interactivity, and
multimedia capabilities of the Internet. Indeed, some early electronic collections were
used to promote Mosaic, the rst graphical Web browser, when it was introduced in 1993.
One of the rst was EXPO, which originated in 1993 with an online guide to artifacts from
the Vatican Library that were on display at the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
EXPO was later maintained on servers outside of the Library of Congress network and was
expanded into several “pavilions”—including archaeological, architectural, historical, and
paleontological exhibits—which have been donated by several organizations. Another
pioneer was the WebMuseum, an exhibition of artworks by Western painters from
medieval times to the present day that began in 1994 by a computer scientist at the École
Polytechnique near Paris. The WebMuseum grew to incorporate reproductions of
paintings, background text, and musical selections submitted by a large number of

contributors.
Museum structure and operations

Building design and function
Establishing a new museum or refurbishing an old one is normally a prestigious event

with a high public pro le. Its design is expected to re ect this, whether involving an
existing building—probably preserved for its own historic or architectural signi cance—or
new premises. As a building that houses items of excellence, it is expected to match the
quality and distinction that the exhibits bring to it. Today’s museum building is
multifunctional in character, providing open space to accommodate exhibits and visitors
but with high security and stringent environmental controls to protect the collections.
Public facilities such as shops and restaurants gure prominently. Less obvious is the
storage for reserve collections, laboratory and workshop space for exhibit conservation and
preparation, facilities for teaching and studying, and of ces.
For the architect and designer, meeting

Wright, Frank Lloyd: Guggenheim
Museum contemporary public expectations of museums and
Guggenheim Museum, designed by the changes to their function in society brings

Frank Lloyd Wright, constructed 1956– considerable challenge. The concept of the museum
59; in New York City.
as a “seat of the Muses” is much diminished, although
© Photos.com/Jupiterimages
hints of this still linger; for example, the classical
portico so common in earlier museums is still to be
found in vestigial form in Josef Paul Kleihues’s design (1996) for the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Chicago. The concept of the museum as a cathedral, seen among
some 19th-century museums and typi ed in London’s Natural History Museum, also
lingers: the massive cylindrical light at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s original
building (1995), designed by Mario Botta, re ects the architect’s belief that a museum has
a role analogous to a cathedral. In contrast, the designs of Kisho Kurokawa for the Ehime
Prefectural Science Museum in Niihama and the Shiga Kogen Roman Art Museum in
Nagano re ect the implicit awareness of Japanese culture to its impermanence and
perpetual change. Both of these museums have a glazed conical structure to house
service functions.
The best-known glazed structure built to service a

Natural History Museum
museum is the pyramid in the Cour Napoléon of the
Natural History Museum (1881), London,
designed by Alfred Waterhouse. historic Louvre Museum in Paris. The pyramid is the
Dennis Marsico/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. only external feature of the massive refurbishment
and expansion of the principal museum of France
during the 1990s. It acts as the hub linking old with new, establishing new circulation
patterns within the museum as well as a variety of commercial and other facilities
underground. Across the river from the Louvre is another example of the adaptation of a
historic building—a major railway terminus—that serves as a museum of the 19th century,
the Musée d’Orsay. In London, Tate Modern, which opened in 2000, is also housed in an
enormous industrial building, the Bankside Power Station.
The long-held belief that the container should not usurp

Musée d'Orsay: atrium
the collection was challenged by a number of museums
Atrium in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
built around the turn of the 21st century. Preeminent
© Index Open
among these was Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in
Bilbao, Spain. Opened in 1997, it has a metal-clad
curvaceous sculptural form that places it among the masterpieces of 20th-century
architecture. Internally, the museum is no less spectacular, and the design of the vast
open spaces presents potential con ict with the exhibits. Another building that exploited
a new architectural paradigm is Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, built to
create an aesthetic and emotional experience appropriate to the subject. The Groninger
Museum in Groningen, Netherlands, is another building that challenged traditional
museum and architectural values. It features a series of pavilions that were built for each
collection by a different designer to create a varied visitor experience. The search
continues to nd the extent to which a stage set is required to enhance the museum
experience.
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Museum organization
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997), Administration
Spain, designed by Frank Gehry.
© PixAchi/Shutterstock.com There is no consistent pattern for the general
administration of museums throughout the world. In
part, the lack of such a pattern re ects the diversity of museums’ collections, but it also
re ects an ambivalence in the understanding of the role of museums in society—i.e.,
whether museums are guardians and interpreters of the cultural heritage, repositories for
the study of primary evidence relating to human and natural history, social instruments in
community development, or facilities for leisure and recreation.
On the most general level, museums may be either privately or publicly administered.
Since 1970 there has been a marked increase in the number of private-sector museums,
yet even some of these have corporate standing under general legislation and receive
public moneys. In addition, private patronage has become important for public museums,
which often nd themselves competing with private museums for additional funding
from individual and corporate sources. In the public sector, national museums may be
overseen by such diverse ministries as education, tourism, defense, environment, national
heritage, culture, and leisure. The situation can be even more complicated at the local
level.
The level of state control varies from country to country. In France, for instance, the state
has traditionally exercised greater control over museums. A number of the national
museums in Paris operate under a semiautonomous administrative council, with an
executive chairman who has a dual responsibility for policy and executive matters. In
addition, there are a number of national museums located outside Paris, and some
technical control over the country’s municipal museums is exercised by the central
administration. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, public museums have
traditionally enjoyed greater autonomy. Britain’s national museums—located mainly in the
capital cities of London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast—receive funds from the national
government, but each museum has been established by its own speci c legislation, which
empowers a board of trustees (nominally independent of the government) to administer
and raise funds and to guide the museum’s policies. British municipal museums, however,
are provided under general legislation, and representatives from local government form
the management committees by law. The British model can be found in other European
and English-speaking countries. In the United States only the dependent museums of the
Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service have national status and are
nanced by the federal government.
Management
Most museums operate under some form of governing body. This body de nes the
general policy of the museum and provides and controls the necessary resources to
deliver it. The appointment of the director and perhaps of other staff members is usually
among its responsibilities. The director of a museum governed by this type of body is
responsible for the formulation and implementation of policy, for the day-to-day running
of the institution, and for facilitating communication among the museum’s governing
body, staff, supporters, and visitors.
The operation of a museum involves a wide variety of skills. These involve specialists in
subjects relevant to museum collections (normally designated curators or keepers),
information scientists involved in the documentation of collections and related scienti c
information (sometimes known as registrars), and conservators concerned with the
scienti c examination and treatment of collections to prevent deterioration. Another
group is involved more actively with the public functioning of the museum. It includes
specialists in education, communication, and interpretation, designers, the security staff,
and marketing and public relations personnel as well as administrative, maintenance, and
other support workers. Such diversity can lead to complex staff structures. Many of the
larger, older established museums with encyclopaedic collections have a large number of
senior specialized personnel. In museums where the emphasis is on providing services for
the general public and the collections are less wide-ranging, there are likely to be fewer
curatorial and more service personnel. Nevertheless, museums are labour-intensive, and
the extent to which new technologies can alleviate the need for labour is limited. In all
types of museums, operation is based on teamwork, and this has important implications
for the management structures adopted as well as for the training of museum staffs.
Organized training for museum personnel to meet the requirements of such a diverse
operation is of relatively recent origin. Early attempts were made in the context of subject-
based studies, with little attempt at providing an understanding of the museum as a
public institution. By 1910 three courses were being provided in the United States. The
following decade, however, saw the commencement of further courses, some in the
United States at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum and at the Newark Museum in
New Jersey and others in Europe. One of these was the well-known École du Louvre,
created to train curators for the French museums. Museology was also introduced in the
curriculum of Masaryk University in Brno, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic), in 1921. The
rst validation for museum training, organized on an in-service basis, appears to have
been the diploma of the Museums Association introduced in Britain in 1930. There the
University of London also introduced postgraduate courses intended to train specialist
curators in art history and archaeology.
It was not until about 1965, however, that university faculties or departments of museology
—museum studies, as it is more commonly known in English-speaking countries—were
created with a speci c emphasis on the theory and practice of museums, as opposed to
an emphasis on the subjects represented in their collections. In certain countries, notably
Japan and some Latin American nations, curators are required by law to have graduated in
museology before they can practice. Such courses, where available, normally provide some
training in museum management. Although some museum studies are taught at the
undergraduate level, postgraduate training is the generally recognized requirement.
Funding
Public and private sources
Until the mid-1970s, public funds constituted the major income source for public
museums and in many cases contributed a considerable percentage of the income of
those operated privately. With increasing restrictions on expenditure of public moneys,
however, funding from multiple sources has become far more commonplace. In both
developed and developing countries this can be crucial to the formation and continued
maintenance of a museum service.
The main source of funds for museums in the public sector remains the local or national
government. This can result in a lack of exibility in the use of such moneys, because the
funds usually are subject to government policies that have little bearing on the particular
requirements of museums. In addition, these museums are required to compete for funds
against such traditional public expenditures as education, social services, defense, and law
and order, and, in consequence, museums often are given low priority.
Many museums were founded through private benefaction, and a few have endowments
that help to support their routine operation. Others may have received bequests, many of
which are designated to be used only for the purchase of objects. Such sources, although
they may seem appropriate when secured, can suffer from changes in economic
circumstances and may have attached to them conditions that are incompatible with
requirements of the modern museum.
Museums have become increasingly involved in fund-raising, in seeking commercial

sponsorship, and in their own trading activities. Fund-raising may be undertaken by the
museum, by a commissioned organization, or by a support body such as the many
“friends of the museum” organizations now in existence. Fund-raising and sponsorship are
normally directed toward a speci c project or development.
Entrance fees
Many museums charge entrance fees to help nance operations—even in some countries,
such as the United Kingdom, that previously had a strong tradition of free entry to
museums. Some museums charge admission fees only for major exhibitions. Others have
introduced a system of voluntary donations by visitors on entry to supplement their
income, but the results of this approach have been generally disappointing.
Commercial activities
Commercial activities have become a signi cant feature of many museums. These may
take the form of restaurants or shops that provide a service to visitors as well as income to
the museum. Some museums have separate trading companies that act as publishers or
engage in mail-order business, the pro ts from which are directed to the museum for
general purposes. In this way the museum retains its charitable status, is not exposed to
the direct dangers that would follow commercial failure, and also circumnavigates any
requirements that direct income be returned to the public purse.
Support organizations
A number of museums have support organizations, sometimes known as “friends of the

museum.” These groups often engage in fund-raising and provide voluntary assistance in
a number of ways, and they can provide a powerful lobby for the museum’s cause. The
museum’s volunteers may form a separate organization. The museum usually acts as host
to such organizations for their various activities. In some countries a national coordinating
body provides advice and assistance, and the World Federation of Friends of Museums
was founded in 1975 to encourage worldwide cooperation among such societies.
Museum cooperation
The rst organized cooperation among museums at the international level arose through
the League of Nations’ Committee of Intellectual Cooperation. In 1922 the Committee
established an International Museums Of ce, which initiated a number of studies and
publications until it went out of existence in 1946. In that year the International Council of
Museums (ICOM) was created, and today this nongovernmental organization provides a
world forum for museum professionals through regular meetings and through continuous
communication over the Internet. In some countries where there are no separate
associations for museum personnel, the national committees of ICOM ll the role of
professional association. ICOM is also the recognized adviser on museum matters to the
Social and Economic Council of the United Nations as well as the United Nations
Educational, Scienti c, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Since its inception in 1946, UNESCO has been responsible for a growing body of legislation
to protect the world’s cultural heritage, has been active in promoting the return and
restitution of cultural property to its country of origin, has initiated campaigns to ensure
the protection of what it deems “World Heritage sites,” and has provided nancial
assistance for the renovation of older museums and the establishment of new ones,
particularly in developing countries. Some of its member states were responsible for the
creation in 1956 of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and
Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM).
A number of regional governmental bodies also have an interest in museum provision. For
example, the Council of Europe has promoted legislation for the protection of Europe’s
archaeological heritage, has undertaken a number of studies on museum provision, and
has promoted an award for museums. The European Union has promoted exchanges
between museums, encouraged the development of “European Rooms” in certain
museums of its member states, and contributed substantially to the capital costs of
museum development.
Museum activities
Collection
Acquisition policies
Relatively few museums have been established with the speci c goal of forming a
collection; instead, most have been created to receive an existing collection. With the
existing collection as its base, the museum then traditionally works to ll in gaps in the
collection or extend its activities into other, usually related, elds. For this reason, many
museums have heterogeneous collections, at best accumulated under an “encyclopaedic”
philosophy (which has rarely been successful unless major resources were available to
achieve it) and at worst continuing a “cabinet of curiosities” approach (which may amuse
and entertain the clientele but does little to engender scholarship or research). Often the
collections made depended on the expertise or whim of the curator and were sure to
change when that curator was succeeded by someone with different interests. This
method has produced some outstanding special collections, but these resulted from
circumstance rather than long-term planning.
Explicit collection policies are now more common. Indeed, where national codes of
practice exist, a strong recommendation is normally to be found on the need for a clear
statement of collecting activity. This arose for a number of reasons. Not only should a
public institution’s policies be available for scrutiny, but the cost of maintaining collections
of ever-increasing size must be justi ed, a factor highlighted at times of economic
pressure. Further, although a museum may have arisen from circumstance, an
assessment of its available resources, the clientele it attracts or intends to attract, and the
role it can serve in society generally must be matched against its primary resource, its
collections.
Legality
Every museum is responsible for ensuring the legality of its acquisitions. Laws regulating
collection vary from country to country, but, whether or not a state has enacted its own
legislation or rati ed relevant international conventions, museum staff are expected to
conform to generally recognized professional codes of ethics. Most regulation of collecting
activity embodies principles established in the 1954 Convention for the Protection of
Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Con ict and the 1970 Convention on the Means of
Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural
Property, both approved by member states of UNESCO. However, a number of countries
involved in international trade found it dif cult to ratify the 1970 convention, and certain
dif culties arose over the de nition of cultural property. The 1995 Unidroit Convention on
Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects was intended to resolve these issues. Similar
conventions exist on the regional level as well: for instance, in 1976 the Organization of
American States adopted the San Salvador Convention on the Protection of the
Archaeological, Historical, and Artistic Heritage of the American Nations, and, with a
similar purpose in mind, in 1992 the Council of Europe issued a revised European
Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage.
Given the number and variety of legal regulations and professional codes, it is unlikely that
a museum with clearly stated academic objectives will acquire illicit material. Indeed,
methods of collection re ect the fact that a museum is concerned not only with
collections per se but also with the information inherent in or associated with them.
Where applicable, direct acquisition through eldwork is much preferred. This involves
collecting material through archaeological excavation, ethnological expeditions, or natural
science eldwork, and the collecting either is undertaken by the staff of the museum or is
sponsored by it. Indirect acquisition is handled through purchases, gifts, bequests, and
loans of objects. Where objects are thus acquired, art museums often stipulate that staff
must assess a number of quali cations, notably the provenance (a record of the object’s
ownership) of each piece, and that a committee must approve the acquisition.
Protection of cultural property
Conventions such as those cited above re ect the fact that the collecting activities of the
industrialized world are markedly different from those available to the developing nations.
In some instances the signi cant cultural property of entire nations has been dispersed to
private collections and museums in different parts of the world, leaving the developing
museums to rely on casts and replicas to convey the area’s cultural achievements. The
international community has had only limited success in encouraging the return, through
exchange or loan, of such material to its country of origin.
The true signi cance of cultural property, collectively the universal heritage of humankind,
places on museums a considerable responsibility. The acceptance of objects or collections
into their care implies a permanence not associated with the acceptance of other types of
property. Some museum legislation acknowledges this, declaring such collections
inalienable. The disposal of museum collections in part or in full therefore normally only
occurs in cases where items no longer serve a useful scholarly or interpretative purpose.
The case for deaccessioning, as it is known, can only otherwise have any validity where it is
done to correct the imbalances of earlier indiscriminate collecting, and in that case the
material concerned should rst be made available to other suitable museums before
disposal. The Baltimore Museum of Art, for example, sold several pieces in the 2010s to
acquire work by previously underrepresented populations. During this time, however, the
Berkshire Museum in Pitts eld, Massachusetts, caused controversy when it announced
that it would use proceeds from the sale of dozens of artworks not for the care of its
collection or for acquisition purposes, as recommended by the American Alliance of
Museums, but for the operation of the institution.
Conservation
A museum’s prime responsibility must be to maintain its collections and to do everything

possible to delay the natural laws of deterioration. The acquisition of an item almost
certainly brings it into a new and potentially alien environment. Material that has been
recovered from the ground through archaeological excavation may need immediate
treatment to stabilize it. Many of the materials from which objects are made are inherently
unstable and undergo chemical or structural change as they age. A new or shifting
environment can accelerate these changes, and temperature, light, humidity, and human
and other biological factors all need to be controlled. In addition, conservation involves the
treatment and, where feasible and acceptable, the restoration of objects as nearly as
possible to their former condition.
Most large museums have their own laboratories where preservation and restoration work
is carried out, and some take on projects for other museums as well. In some cases, as at
the British Museum, a separate department of scienti c research supports the museum’s
academic and conservation work, providing advanced scienti c equipment for the
analysis, dating, and identi cation of materials. Some museums are served by
independent conservation laboratories, an example of which is the Canadian Conservation
Institute in Ottawa, which uses a eet of mobile laboratories to attend to museum
collections in many parts of the country.
Documentation
Documentation is a signi cant function of any museum, whether it holds only a few
hundred objects or many millions of items. Quite apart from the need for records to
maintain adequate control of its collections, a museum’s documentation system provides
an indispensable record of the information associated with the objects for research. The
documentation system also may include records to facilitate the museum’s interpretative
and other work.
The form of a museum’s documentation system may vary considerably, but to meet these
requirements it should provide the fullest possible information about each item and its
history. There are no generally accepted classi cation schemes for museum objects,
although certain subjects have developed schemes with numeric or alphanumeric
notations to facilitate the ordering and retrieval of information. For the natural sciences,
taxonomic names are normally used.
A number of museums have developed computerized documentation systems, some

online but others relying on machine-generated indexes, periodically updated, to meet
most of their information requirements. The advantages of computerized documentation
have been exploited in a number of ways—for instance, in exchanging data between
museums to facilitate study and research or in making collection information available for
public use in the museum gallery or over the Internet.
Research
Because they hold the primary material evidence for a number of subjects concerned with
an understanding of humankind and the environment, museums clearly have an
important role in research. A museum’s research program is related to its objectives as an
institution. A program may be concerned directly with the public services provided, in
preparing exhibitions, catalogs, and other publications, or with promoting a better
understanding of the discipline or region that it serves. In large museums, and in
university museums in particular, pure and applied research may be of national or
international signi cance and may be associated with eldwork or study visits. Active
research and publication on a given topic, apart from contributing to the academic
standing of the institution, may attract further collections relevant to the topic.
Many museums provide facilities, apart from those used by casual visitors, for researchers
to study collections and associated documentation. Such facilities may include study
rooms with a supporting library and equipment to assist in the examination of collections.
Certain museums have accommodations for visiting foreign scholars; this feature is
particularly helpful at site museums that are dif cult to reach.
Exhibition
Many museums have abandoned the traditional view of exhibition, by which storage and
display are ends in themselves, in favour of an approach that enhances the setting of the
object or collection. To this end museums use the expertise of a number of specialists—
designers, educators, sociologists, and interpreters as well as curators—to improve
communication through objects. The result has been a remarkable transformation in the
presentation of museum displays. Far greater use is made of colour and light (within the
bounds prescribed by conservation requirements), in the way material is interpreted
through a variety of mediums (sound, video, interaction between visitor and exhibit, virtual
reality, as well as more traditional methods), and in the provision of a more relaxing
environment in which to enjoy the exhibits. A result of museums’ increased awareness of
the needs of their visitors has been a considerable increase in museum attendance.
As the museum’s cultural role has developed, so its exhibition work has diversi ed. Large
international exhibitions have been organized by cooperating nations and have been
shown in the major museums of the participating countries. Exhibitions organized for
national circulation are also increasingly common. Museums concerned with a particular
region have arranged topical exhibitions to tour the area, and, in places without suitable
premises for display or in sparsely populated areas, exhibitions have toured in specially
adapted buses or trains. Some countries have developed multipurpose cultural centres,
and collaboration with museums has resulted in exhibition programs successfully
reaching a wide audience.
Interest in the historic and natural environment globally has involved museums in the
preservation and interpretation of sites, monuments, and landscapes (as in the Slave
House museum at Gorée Island, Senegal). Here the con ict inherent in imposing an
interpretive medium into a natural or historical context has to be resolved. In its simplest
form, interpretation may be conveyed through nature or history trails in which information
is provided in written or recorded form. With a historic property there are also
opportunities to reenact events associated with the property, such as period battle scenes
and banquets, to demonstrate industrial or craft techniques, or to use theatre and son et
lumière performances to interpret the site.
Maison des Esclaves (“Slave House”), Educational services
Gorée Island, Senegal.
© GoLo/Fotolia
The contribution that museums can make to
education is widely acknowledged. The majority of
their clientele learn by looking at exhibitions and displays. There has been, however, a long
association with schools, and many museums provide services speci cally designed to
meet schools’ needs. Services include facilities for use both in the museum and at the
school, many of which are administered by separate departments of museum education
employing teachers for the purpose.
Special rooms equipped for teaching and for handling specimens are provided in many
museums. By allowing the study and handling of objects from its collections, the museum
can give substance and form to the bare facts of art, history, and science. Some museums
build special collections for this purpose. Teaching may be undertaken by the museum’s
educational staff or, more often, by the schoolteacher, who will have been advised and
instructed by the staff. For advanced studies, particularly in subjects like archaeology and
geology, the availability of museum collections can be indispensable.
Although opinion differs as to the value of school loan collections, many museums do
provide small exhibit cases or kits that may be borrowed by the school for a limited period
for classroom teaching. Unlike libraries, museums are not able to provide extensive loan
services (which would con ict with their prime purpose), but, for rural schools unable to
visit the museum, such a facility, albeit limited, meets a need. In some areas museums
include the larger community schools within their traveling exhibition schedules.
As a better-educated adult population with increased leisure time seeks purposeful

outlets, museums are well placed to provide activities. Many museums offer lectures,
courses, demonstrations, eld excursions, and extensive travel-abroad opportunities.
Information services
A museum acts as an information centre for its community. In addition to its displays and
exhibitions, its data banks and publications, it has a staff of specialists, who in most cases
are available by appointment to provide information on request.
Museum publications may be educational or cultural or may be designed for a popular

market. They may take the form of periodicals, handbooks, catalogs, research papers, or
general guides to aspects of the museum and are an important medium for
disseminating information to the lay public and scholar alike; such information and
products are now commonly available via the museum’s Web site. Many museums also
offer an opinion on items brought to them for identi cation. This can be of value to both
the inquirer and the museum because it provides an awareness of local discoveries and
holdings that aids the museum’s efforts to build up a picture of its area of responsibility. At
the same time it provides an informed opinion as a public service. Museums rarely provide
valuations, however, and some, to avoid con icts of interest, decline to have any
connection with the antiques trade.
Geoffrey D. Lewis The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
CITATION INFORMATION
ARTICLE TITLE: Museum
WEBSITE NAME: Encyclopaedia Britannica
PUBLISHER: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
DATE PUBLISHED: 07 February 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/museum-cultural-institution
ACCESS DATE: February 14, 2020

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From mouseion to museum

Latin derivation, museum, appears to have been

Museology and museography

The precursors of museums

Evidence from antiquity

Asia and Africa

Successive Chinese emperors continued to promote the arts, manifest in ne works of

history, as instanced in wayside shrines and certain religious ceremonies. Similar

Elsewhere in Europe, royal collections were developed. King Matthias I of Hungary

during the 15th century. Maximilian I of Austria

Specialized personal collections

Collections of learned societies

Toward the modern museum

From private collection to public exhibition

The rst public museums

The British Museum

Louvre Museum, Paris, with pyramid

Other European collections

By this time a number of new collections were available to the

The spread of the European model

directed by a proponent of a uni ed Germany, Hans von Aufsess, and by mid-century

In uence of industry and science

The United States

The rst of the historic house museums to be

Other national and regional museums

Royal Ontario Museum

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,

Tokyo National Museum

Harare (then known as Salisbury) were founded in 1901, the

The 20th and 21st centuries

Early period of reassessment

Post-World War II era

Museums and the public

cases restitution followed). Reconstruction provided opportunities for the realization of

Museums and the environment

A related development is the ecomuseum, such as the

Cathedral of the Transﬁguration and Montceau-les-Mines in France. There a bold

Museums and public nance

Contemporary museum development has been much in uenced by changing policies in

Many buildings of historical signi cance were adapted

Following the success of Guggenheim Bilbao, eye-

As museums contended with changing visitor needs

Sometimes museums are classi ed according to the

An analysis of museums based on the nature of their collections, although it fails to

The general museum, particularly at the regional or local

strong research program is maintained. In some museums

Natural history and natural science museums

Interior of the Natural History Museum,

Science museums are particularly popular with

Museums devoted to modern science, such as the

American Clock & Watch Museum

While history museums may include archaeological material, there is nevertheless a

Another specialized form of the history museum

Romania; Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg, Ontario; Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia,

Individual historic houses have been preserved as

Other museums commemorate events, as do the

paintings, background text, and musical selections submitted by a large number of

Museum structure and operations

Establishing a new museum or refurbishing an old one is normally a prestigious event

For the architect and designer, meeting

Guggenheim Museum, designed by the changes to their function in society brings

The best-known glazed structure built to service a