Museums

Museums are buildings that showcase a collection of artifacts or other objects, to educate visitors about some topic. Museums exist for practically every subject you can imagine, from typical areas like history, art, or science to strange niche topics like eccentric collections, espionage, and even fringe phenomena.

Understand

A typical exhibit at a history museum or a historic house, demonstrating what the interior of a house would have looked like in the past

Museums can be traced back over 2,000 years to private collections of wealthy individuals. Public museums started in the late middle ages. The Capitoline Museums were founded in 1471 and opened to the public in 1734. The Vatican Museums date back to 1506. The Royal Armouries in the Tower of London opened to the public in 1660. However, museums did not become widespread until the 19th and 20th centuries.

Museums are typically created to preserve historic artifacts, to educate and to enable research. Many museums are established by national and local governments or by universities, educational charities or non-profit organisations. A few museums are run as profit-making commercial ventures, while others are run as a spin-off from commercial or military organisations, to promote their products or public image. There are also museums created as a private hobby, perhaps later receiving public or community support.

A museum may be as simple as a small room with a narrowly focussed collection, perhaps opened one day per week by a volunteer. Other museums, typically national or regional museums, are in large buildings housing a wide variety of exhibitions. Living history museums can include a village or town.

Get in

Admission and donations

Some museums charge admission (to support the work of the museum), whereas others have free entry. Some museums have agreements where members of one museum get free or reduced admission to others. Some museums charge for admission but have a lower fee or free entry for local residents, who may be indirectly subsidising the museum via their taxes. Many museums have free or discounted admission for everyone on certain days or evenings. Museums in some countries also offer discounts to students, on presentation of an appropriate student card.

In some museums, there is no admission per se, but you can donate to the museum. If the donation is a "suggested donation", it is expected that, out of etiquette, you will donate to the museum. In most cases, if there is no admission you should donate to the museum a comparable amount of money to that of an admission fee.

Some very popular museums require a reservation in advance to limit crowds; other very niche museums require a reservation because otherwise they won't open. At some other museums a reservation isn't necessary but can allow you to avoid waiting in line when you get there.

Taking in belongings

Museums may restrict what belongings, such as bags, you can take in, and may have a facility, such as a cloakroom, near the entrance where you can leave belongings. They may also have security staff present and may inspect or x-ray belongings or use metal detectors. This is more likely if the museum's collections are of a certain nature, or high profile.

See

Guided tours are usually possible and may even be free. In certain museums a guided tour may be the only way visitors are allowed in.

Where there aren't guided tours, there may be self-guided audio tours or maps showing you the layout of the museum. These typically show you the locations of all the exhibits, or rooms, in relation to the museum in general.

Most museums are divided into exhibits, and the bigger the museums the larger the exhibits, the fancier the exhibits, and the more exhibits there are.

Do

Museums, especially if oriented towards kids, may have performances or interactive activities. Science museums in particular often have elaborate interactive exhibits exploring scientific phenomena. Sometimes there are planetariums in which you can view documentary films about space; the movie screens in planetariums are so large that watching them can cause motion sickness.

Museums may have tours, often showing parts of the museums that are not accessible to the general public.

Buy

There will often be a souvenir shop on-site. Most museums see this shop not as a public service but as a source of profit that can subsidise other portions of the museum's operation, which do serve the institution's core mission. The items therefore can be overpriced or expensive; often, they might not serve any purpose except as a souvenir. These souvenirs may however be unique items. Sometimes the items are made for use, with a twist reminding of the museum, such as a deck of cards in historic style.

If a museum is engaged in research, they may have one or more books in print. These publications are specialised and usually closely related to the subject matter covered in the museum's main collections. An art gallery might sell photographs or postcards depicting individual works in its collections. Very occasionally, a museum or gallery will have an associated book-store.

Eat

The food at museum cafes or restaurants is likely to be overpriced; therefore, if the museum is in a city with other restaurants within walking distance, you may be able to save money by getting your meal at a restaurant outside the museum. Many museums won't let you back in after you leave (at least not without paying admission again), which means that if you anticipate spending more than an hour or two inside it's a good idea to eat first.

If the museum restaurant is nice, you may however regard the price as part of your contribution to the museum. At living history sites the restaurant may serve something meant to feel like period dishes, sometimes best-effort, sometimes obviously quasi-historic.

Sleep

While most museums (and their curators) are not hôteliers or pub and tavern landlords, a few organise occasional sleepovers aimed at children (typically around 10 years old, maybe with a parent). The kids spend one night in a museum gallery with activities in the evening before bedding down in a sleeping bag.

Another exception is the open-air living museum which recreates an entire village. A restored tourist ghost town or pioneer village may slip one or two modern, working businesses into the otherwise-historic village, disguising them to look (from the outside) to be period-appropriate. Behind the genteel façade of the village inn that served the community a century or two ago in the museum's depicted time period is a modern hotel or a modern pub; step inside and the illusion of being in the colonial pioneer era may be quickly shattered by the electric hum of refrigerators and the glow of fluorescent light.

Respect

In a museum, especially one with valuable or historically significant objects on display, you must have respect toward the objects being shown. A general principle is that you should not touch anything on display unless a sign says "Please touch" or something similar.

While some museums and galleries allow photography of their collections, others don't. This is sometimes for commercial reasons, but is more commonly for security or conservation concerns (the flash needed for taking photographs in the otherwise purposely dim light can harm works of art or other precise crafts), or to maintain a specific atmosphere. If you want to take photos, in the absence of specific notices, it's generally best to ask first, especially if you plan on using a flash gun or tripod. You may also want to check copyrights on works of art displayed in a museum, especially if you are a professional photographer.

Destinations

British Museum in London.

Museums can be found all over the world. Even small cities will often have one or two, maybe to educate visitors about local history or display some local resident's unusual interest. In many nations, there will be an extensive collection of museums in the national capital, showcasing the history, creative works (like paintings and films), or scientific developments of the capital city or the country that the capital city can be found inside.

Some cities are famous for high concentrations of excellent museums:

• Berlin
• London
• New York City
• Paris
• Saint Petersburg
• Moscow
• Washington, D.C.
• Madrid
• Stockholm
• Florence
• Chicago
• Rome (including the Vatican)
• Amsterdam
• Pittsburgh
• Oxford

See also

• Living history museums
• UNESCO World Heritage List