A museum is a space that houses a collection of art, objects, specimens, or plants and shows it to the public for education and enjoyment. Museums vary widely in focus and type, but all share a desire to preserve and display a portion of a culture’s history for future generations. Museums can serve a number of purposes: as recreational facilities; as scholarly venues; as symbols of national pride or memory; as sources of civic inspiration; and even as vehicles for overtly ideological concepts.
Museums have been established for many reasons throughout the centuries, reflecting an innate human desire to collect and interpret, often with discernible origins in large collections built up by individuals and groups before the modern era. The definition of museum has also evolved to reflect the changing needs and intentions of these institutions over time.
Today, museums are often defined as independent institutions that acquire, conserve, research, communicate, and exhibit both tangible and intangible heritage for the benefit of all humanity. This is a broad and flexible definition that allows for a great deal of creativity in the types of museums we can now find around the world.
Currently, there are around 43,000 museums worldwide, with the largest being the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with a staggering 8.7 million visitors in 2022 and the Natural History Museum of London in second with 6.8 million visitors. These institutions are often funded by taxpayers and may be for-profit or nonprofit organizations. Some for-profit museums are operated by companies, while others are run by private individuals who have collected items for a long time and wish to share their collections with the public for profit.
While most museums display some of their objects at any given time, they own many more that are never on view. These items can be used for research by scholars who study paintings, the posture of a particular person, or the behavior of a species. Additionally, some museums own objects that were taken without permission from people or their cultures, and there is a movement to return these items to their rightful owners.
The International Council of Museums (Icom) has been working to revise the definition of a museum for over a decade, and in April, 2022 a revised draft was passed at Icom’s Extraordinary General Conference in Prague. The final definition will be published shortly. In the meantime, Icom is engaging in a process of consultation that includes four rounds over 18 months with museum representatives from Icom’s 126 National Committees. The results of this outreach will be incorporated into the final definition. The process is open to everyone who wants to participate. For more information, visit the Icom Define page.