What counts as a museum rather than a library, archive, gallery, historical site or tourist attraction?
The reason I ask is that I’m planning to visit 100 museums this year, and I want them to be recognisable as museums without any fudging. But I’ll also be going to some places that might count and it’d be nice to be able to add them to the total.
So, for example, my local library, which is just a library with only rare exhibitions, that doesn’t count. The Women’s Library in Whitechapel, however, is primarily an archive and research centre, so it counts.
Tilbury Fort is just a fort with nothing that wouldn’t have naturally be there. But the Tower of London has some brought-in objects; does it count? (I know there’s a museum inside the Tower, the Royal Fusilier’s Museum, - that’s unquestionably a separate museum). How about Hampton Court? That always has historical displays on general history of the time, not just stuff about the house.
Sadly, I can’t just say to myself ‘is it accredited by the Museums Association or the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council?’ because they include a lot of places which definitely don’t count, like the Tate Modern.
I just realised that the second paragraph seems to contradict itself. What I mean is, I’m not sure where the fudging boundaries lie, except usually around my waist.
You’re not always going to find a clear cut answer to this question. I like the definition from the International Association of Museums which is as follows:
A non-profitmaking, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment.
One of the key points there is that to be a museum one must have "material evidence. Notice that they didn’t say artifacts. A zoo can be counted as a museum and an animal is not an artifact (but a stuffed animal could be!).
There’s always going to be a bit of fudging. The Ripley’s chain of museums doesn’t count as a museum to the IAM or the American Association of Museums because it’s a for profit institution but I bet a lot of people think of them as museums anyway.
I wouldn’t count an archive and research center as a museum. The Clinton Library counts as a museum because they display artifacts and offer an interpretation of those artifacts.
It can still be a museum. I work at a museum that is a historic building and we count our building as our most important artifact.
No, you really can’t do that because so many organizations define a museum differently. Here’s how I would define a museum.
#1: Educational in nature. #2: Exhibits that interpret artifacts (art, animals, whatever) #3: Open to the public. #4: Has a mission statement. #5: Properly cares for and stores artifacts.
There’s certainly some wiggle room there. But I think this is a good start.
I think it’s one of those “I know it when I see it” type things. Many public libraries in my area have a display case that will sometimes have items related to local history (e.g. US Civil War stuff), but that doesn’t make the library a museum per se, in my opinion.
If you can come over to the US, try Washington, DC. Not only are you going to be able to knock out at least a tenth of your goal, many of them are in walking distance of each other so you can hit multiple ones per day, depending on whether or not you want to soak up as much as reasonably possible or if you’re primarily interested in just being able to say you went to the museum (in which case you could easily hit ten museums in 1 day in DC).
Depending on how much traveling you want to do and how much time and money you have, one of the easiest thing to do might be to stick to things with “Museum” in their name. Now, I’m sure there are non-museum things with museum in their name, but you could probably figure those out pretty quickly.
Off the top of my head, I would say that it’s a place that primarily exists to displays objects, and that it’s defined more by the objects inside than by the location. Taking the second condition, if the Lourve put all of their works on tour and I saw all of them, I would consider myself to have had the full, or nearly full, experience of visiting the Lourve, since it’s the works of art that make it important. If, however, the Tower of London put all of their artifacts on tour, I would not consider that equivalent to visiting the Tower, since I’d still be missing the Tower itself. Therefore, the Lourve is a museum, but the Tower of London is not.
And on the first criterion, I wouldn’t count a library, since its primary purpose is the storage of information, not its display. And while a zoo is about display, I don’t think I would count that, either, since I wouldn’t consider animals “objects”.
Yes, I think the ‘interprets those artefacts’ bit is probably key. That’s why I wouldn’t count Tilbury Fort, btw - unless it’s changed (it’s been a while, so it might do) it doesn’t make any attempt to interpret the site, it’s just there. I’m still unsure about the Tower, and we’re definitely going there.
The Women’s Library does have exhibitions and is open to the public - I didn’t make that clear before.
One odd kind of museum is a museum where the artifacts that it collects are buildings – sometimes called an “outdoors museum”. An example of that is the Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.
I don’t know that I’d include interpretation as a criterion. Most art musea don’t have any interpretation beyond putting works in the same part of the building as others from the same time and place, and putting a little plaque next to each piece giving the artist’s name, the title of the piece if any, and what materials it’s made from.
I like art galleries and will definitely visit some anyway, but I’m not counting them towards the challenge. If it’s a museum and art gallery, it counts, but not if it’s really just about looking at pictures/sculptures etc. This is partly because it’d make the challenge hardly a challenge at all - I live in Bethnal Green; there are about a hundred art galleries within a mile of my house, and that’s probably not an exaggeration.
I like the point about having at least some of the exhibitions not tied to the venue. Like, yesterday I went to Denis Severs’ house, which is kinda tied to the venue, but it could be put in any other building of that period (as long as you changed the name of the family).
I thought the thread would be about this. I saw it today and wondered whether it should count as a museum. And not because of its location, but rather because the sculptures are created specifically for the installation.
Upon further reflection, if the sculptures were in the same exact location, but had been previously extant in other parts of the world and brought to that location, I would consider it a museum. (If they didn’t provide any identifying info about the artists, I wouldn’t consider it a good museum, but still.)
I wouldn’t consider it a museum - it’s an art gallery. The way I see it, in kingdom, pyllum, class etc form, places like the British museum are museum museum and places like that cool-looking underwater sculpture park are museum artus gallerius. Only the former counts as an actual museum.
I will actually be visiting the US this year, but LA rather than Washington; I think we’ll only have time for a couple of museums there.
Taking the word ‘museum’ as a guide wouldn’t work, because it would include some places that aren’t really museums, and exclude some that clearly are, like the Women’s Library (that links make it clearer than my first post).