There are many types of museum, According to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries
What Is A Museum?
A museum is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance.
Many public museums make these items available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary.
The largest museums are located in major cities throughout the world, while thousands of local museums exist in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas.
Museums have varying aims, ranging from the conservation and documentation of their collection, serving researchers and specialists to catering to the general public.
The goal of serving researchers is not only scientific, but intended to serve the general public.
15+ Types Of Museum In The World
• Open Air Museum
An open-air museum (or open air museum) is a museum that exhibits collections of buildings and artifacts out-of-doors. It is also frequently known as a museum of buildings or a folk museum.
• Art Museum
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum’s own collection.
It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place.
Although primarily concerned with visual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings.
Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections.
• Archaeology Museum
An archaeology museum is a museum that specializes in the display of archaeological artifacts. The country with the most archaeological museums is Greece.
• Agricultural Museum
An agricultural museum is a museum dedicated to preserving agricultural history and heritage.
It aims to educate the public on the subject of agricultural history, their legacy and impact on society.
To accomplish this, it specializes in the display and interpretation of artifacts related to agriculture, often of a specific time period or in a specific region.
They may also display memorabilia related to farmers or businesspeople who impacted society via agriculture (for example, size of the land cultivated as compared to other farmers) or agricultural advances (for example, technology implementation).
An agricultural museum is said to be diachronic if it presents the entire narrative associated with subject of agriculture within its walls, or to be synchronic if it limits its displays to a single experience.
• Visual Museum
A virtual museum is a digital entity that draws on the characteristics of a museum, in order to complement, enhance, or augment the museum experience through personalization, interactivity and richness of content.
Virtual museums can perform as the digital footprint of a physical museum, or can act independently, while maintaining the authoritative status as bestowed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in its definition of a museum.
In tandem with the ICOM mission of a physical museum, the virtual museum is also committed to public access; to both the knowledge systems imbedded in the collections and the systematic, and coherent organization of their display, as well as to their long-term preservation.
• Science Museum
A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc.
Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of subject matter and introduced many interactive exhibits. Modern science museums, increasingly referred to as ‘science centres’ or ‘discovery centres’, also feature technology.
• Folk Museum
A folk museum is a type of museum that deals with folk culture and heritage. Such museums cover local life in rural communities.
A folk museum typically displays historical objects that were used as part of the people’s everyday lives.
Examples of such objects include clothes and tools. Many folk museums are also open-air museums and some cover rural history.
• Textile Museum
The Textile Museum is a museum of textile art in Washington, D.C. It is part of the combined George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum on the university’s main campus in Foggy Bottom.
The museum was founded by collector George Hewitt Myers in 1925 and was originally housed in two historic buildings in D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood: the Myers family home, designed by John Russell Pope, and an adjacent building designed by Waddy Wood.
It reopened in March 2015 as part of George Washington University.
• Wax Museum
A wax museum or waxworks usually consists of a collection of wax sculptures representing famous people from history and contemporary personalities exhibited in lifelike poses, wearing real clothes.
Some wax museums have a special section dubbed the “Chamber of Horrors”, in which the more grisly exhibits are displayed. Some collections are more specialized, as, for example, collections of wax medical models once used for training medical professionals.
Many museums or displays in historical houses that are not wax museums as such use wax figures as part of their displays.
The origin of wax museums goes back to the early 18th century at least, and wax funeral effigies of royalty and some other figures exhibited by their tombs had essentially been tourist attractions well before that.
• Ecomuseum
An ecomuseum is a type of museum focused on the identity of a place, largely based on local participation and aiming to enhance the welfare and development of local communities.
Ecomuseums originated in France, the concept being developed by Georges Henri Rivière and Hugues de Varine, who coined the term ‘ecomusée’ in 1971.
The term “éco” is a shortened form for “écologie”, but it refers especially to a new idea of holistic interpretation of cultural heritage, in opposition to the focus on specific items and objects, performed by traditional museums.
• Maritime Museum
A maritime museum (sometimes nautical museum) is a museum specializing in the display of objects relating to ships and travel on large bodies of water.
A subcategory of maritime museums are naval museums, which focus on navies and the military use of the sea.
• Toy Museum
A toy museum is a museum for toys. They typically showcase toys from a particular culture or period.
These are distinct from children’s museums, which are museums for children, and are often interactive – toy museums may be aimed at children or adults, and may have interactive exhibits or be exclusively for display.
• Ceramics Museum
A ceramics museum is a type of museum wholly or largely devoted to ceramics, usually ceramic art.
Its collections may also include glass and enamel, but typically concentrate on pottery, including porcelain.
Most national collections are in a more general museum covering all of the arts, or just the decorative arts.
However, there are a number of specialized ceramics museums, with some focusing on the ceramics of just one country, region or manufacturer.
Others have international collections, which may be centered on ceramics from Europe or East Asia or have a more global emphasis.
• Children’s Museum
Children’s museums are institutions that provide exhibits and programs to stimulate informal learning experiences for children.
In contrast with traditional museums that typically have a hands-off policy regarding exhibits, children’s museums feature interactive exhibits that are designed to be manipulated by children.
The theory behind such exhibits is that activity can be as educational as instruction, especially in early childhood.
Most children’s museums are nonprofit organizations, and many are run by volunteers or by very small professional staffs.
• Aviation Museum
An aviation museum, air museum, or air and space museum is a type of museum exhibiting the history and artifacts of aviation.
In addition to actual, replica or accurate reproduction aircraft, exhibits can include photographs, maps, models, dioramas, clothing and equipment used by aviators.
