The origin: the Museion of Alexandria (280 BC)

Etimológicamente, el término museo proviene del griego museion, templo y lugar dedicado a las musas, las divinidades inspiradoras de la música y el arte. This term designates the first "museum" built in Alexandria around 280 BC. C. por Ptolomeo I Sóter, fundador de la dinastía griega de los lagidas en Egipto.[4]​ Era un conjunto que servía como santuario y centro de investigación intelectual:.

• - at the material level, it included a large colloquium room "Colloquium (meeting)"), porticoes and a cenacle for meals. In a completely incidental way, the first collection of works of art is installed there.

• - but at that time (3rd-2nd centuries BC), it housed above all a college of scholars pensioned by royal patronage, exempted from the worries of subsistence to dedicate themselves to study. The scholars who frequented it (peripatetic philosophers, philologists, mathematicians, astronomers, geographers, poets) could use a library (the equally famous Library of Alexandria), as well as the botanical and zoological gardens, the astronomical observatory or the anatomy laboratory. They observed nature and texts there. A place of research and study, the museion took up the precepts of Aristotle's Lyceum "Lyceum (philosophical school)" in Greece and made Alexandria the main intellectual center of the Hellenistic era. But with the burning of the library of Alexandria, the monument museion disappeared and with it, the practices it housed.

Latin writers point out the existence of an additional meaning of "museum." Everything seems to indicate that this is what they called grottoes with special characteristics in Roman antiquity, and that, located within the villas, their owners used them to retire to meditate.

There are even older museums, the Ennigaldi-Nanna museum, built by Princess Ennigaldi at the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The site dates from ca. 530 BC C., and contained artifacts from previous Mesopotamian civilizations. It should be noted that a clay drum label – written in three languages ​​– was found at the site, which refers to the history and discovery of a museum object.[5]​[6]​.

The emergence of the "museum"

It was in the Renaissance, especially in Italy, that the galleries where works of art were gathered were called "museum": the word museum preserved (in its Latin form, museum) the idea of ​​places inhabited by the muses. But the meaning that was reborn became more precise in Italy in the second half of the century: the Italian princes were the first to consider the idea of ​​a collection of paintings and sculptures, gathered together, offered to the gaze of travelers and artists in the courtyards and gardens, and later in the galleries (wide corridors that connected different buildings to each other). They associated the notions of a work of art, a collection and an audience (very limited at first because it concerned only the guests of the princes, or very often other princes...), prefiguring the concept of the "museum of the arts."

Erasmus in the dialogue Ciceronianus (1528) described the museums of Rome at that time: «If by chance you happen to see in Rome the “museums” of the Ciceronians, make an effort of memory, I beg you, to remember where you could have seen the image of the Crucified, of the Holy Trinity or of the Apostles. Instead you will have found everywhere the monuments of paganism. And as for the paintings, Jupiter running in the form of golden rain across Danae's chest captures the eyes more than the Archangel Gabriel announcing her divine conception to the Holy Virgin.

At the end of the century, the word "museum" was abandoned in favor of "museum" (although it is noteworthy that in the case of France, although the word for "museum" is musée, the word muséum has been preserved in French as a synonym for "museum of natural history").

The museum and public collection, as we know it today, are an invention of the century and can be considered the fruit of the Enlightenment. In France, in addition to the various royal collections exceptionally open to the visit of the privileged, a "public collection" was formed in 1540 in Lectoure (Gers, today the Musée Eugène-Camoreyt de Lectoure). 1591 to 1840. The first public collection of Roman antiquities was presented in 1614 in the City Hall of Arles, followed by the preparation of the nearby large necropolis of Alyscamps in 1784. But it was not until 1694 that the first public museum in France was inaugurated as such, established in its statutes: it will be in Besançon (in the Franche-Comté), the Musée des beaux-arts et d'archéologie de Besançon. In the rest of the country, it was the Revolution that really established the first modern museums, to make works of art from royal collections or those confiscated from nobles and religious congregations available to citizens. The museum, the official place of art exhibition, became the center of city life. In Paris, the Louvre palace was chosen to become a museum in 1793, after a first presentation of the tableaux du roi in the Luxembourg palace from 1750 to 1779.

Initially a public institution, the "museum" aims to make accessible the entire collective heritage of the Nation, the idea of ​​beauty and knowledge through a selection of objects. The museum shows art, but also science, technology, history and all the new disciplines that brought progress and modernity.

From Antiquity to the Middle Ages

The first collections of art appear in the peristyles of ancient temples. Delphi, the city of oracles, boasted of having a treasure of this kind distributed in as many rooms as there were different towns: the temple of Juno, on Samos, and the Acropolis of Athens were full of masterpieces of art. The successors of Alexander the Great strove to collect sculptures of all kinds. With them they made their triumphal marches more ostentatious and also used them to beautify their capitals: art, on these occasions, gave life and movement to the scene.[8]​.

Rome followed this example. The images of the gods of the defeated peoples were part of the victor's procession and arrived at the same time as the prisoners. Among the Roman emperors, Nero sent 500 statues from Delphi to decorate his imperial palace and increase its luxury and pomp. Public buildings and palaces were tastefully decorated and art mixed there with living nature.

In the Middle Ages, collecting made its appearance, thanks to the treasures of medieval churches and ancient temples that kings and nobles converted into reserves of precious materials. Not to mention the ivories and tapestries that accompanied the nobles from castle to castle. Furthermore, the portraits of a nascent bourgeoisie spread the painting format in Europe, and large historical paintings began to adorn the galleries of the castles that became places of representation and power since the 19th century.

From the Renaissance to the 18th century

At the beginning of the century, Rome only had five ancient marble statues and one bronze. A new era for the arts led by the Medici soon opened in Florence. It was in that stage of the early Renaissance that the idea of ​​the museum re-emerged, a moment in which Antiquity was rediscovered, particularly through the texts of Greek and Roman philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch...). Meanwhile, materials from Antiquity were discovered in the Italian underground, including remains of columns, statues, vases, coins, engraved fragments... which began to be collected. Several noble families from Rome and the rest of Italy participated in this inclination and instigated some excavations that continued with perseverance. Firstly, the popes who, with Sixtus IV, began the collections of the Capitoline Museums in 1471; then humanists and princes, such as Ciriaco of Anconao Niccolò Niccoli, advisor to Cosimo the Elder de Medici, and also noble families such as the Borghese, the Farnese or the Estes; and finally, over time, the wealthy rich who love culture and history. Many collections of medals and antiques were formed throughout Italy. The taste for medals (that is, coins) was joined by that of engraved stones, and Este's family was the first to form a cabinet of engraved stones, whose inscriptions aroused much interest and curiosity. Then they became infatuated with the statues—which remained for a long time as ornaments in the libraries and halls of the princes' palaces and they still liked to see them in open places—and finally a passion arose for portraits of illustrious men, such as Paulo Jovio, who was the first to decide to show his collection of pieces and 400 portraits of important men of his time. In 1521, he presented them in a house built for the occasion in Borgo Vico, near Como. In reference to the museion of Antiquity, he decided to call that place a museum. Cosimo I de' Medici dedicated himself to collecting antiquities and thus laid the foundations of the famous Uffizi gallery, which was inaugurated in 1581.[9] Another Medici, Pope Leo The collections multiplied and will fascinate princes and other curious people. Museums were then going to flourish throughout Europe and everyone saw in this a sign of their power.

From the middle of the century to the 18th century, with the proliferation of exploratory voyages, collections of natural history, or even scientific instruments (such as that of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden), were added to them. This was the golden age of curiosity cabinets. All these collections will be gradually organized by specialties from the end of the century, and will gradually be opened to a wider public than that of princes and scholars. Amerbach's cabinet in Basel was the first open to the public in 1671,[10] followed by the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology in Oxford, which opened its doors in 1683, when the university of that city decided to show to the public the collection that Elias Ashmole had bequeathed to it four years earlier. The building intended to house it thus became the first exhibition site open to the public permanently.[11]​.

Since the century and especially at the beginning of the century, the openings to the public of the hitherto private collections multiplied throughout Europe: in Rome, where the Capitoline Museums were opened to the general public in 1734; in London, with the British Museum opened in 1759; in Florence, with the Uffizi Gallery in 1765; in Rome, even with the Pio-Clementino Museum in 1771, even though the initial core of the collection of the Vatican museums including the Laocoön acquired by Julius II was exposed to the public since 1506 in the patio of statues; in Vienna, with the Belvedere palace, in 1811; in Madrid, the Prado museum, in 1819; in Geneva, with the Rath museum, in 1826; in Munich, with the Alte Pinakothek in 1828, the Munich Glyptotheque in 1830; in Berlin, with the Altes Museum, in 1830, one of the first museums to be installed in a building specially designed for that use;[12] while some princely collections long accessible to privileged visitors were opened to the general public, as in Saint Petersburg, with the Winter Palace, in 1852, or in Dresden, with the Gallery of the Old Masters, in 1855.

In France, the Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology of Besançon had its origin in the bequest, in 1694, of the collections and library of Abbot Boisot"), who gave them on the condition that they be open twice a week to the public. Then, the Cabinet des médailles") was opened to the public in 1720, after its transfer from Versailles to the National Library. In 1750 a true gallery of paintings was created in the Luxembourg Palace, in which the public part of the crown collection was exhibited, which was closed in 1779. After the Revolution saw the opening of the Louvre, on August 10, 1793. Similarly, the National Museum of Natural History of France was created in that same year (from the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants, existing since 1635), the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in 1794 and the Museum of French Monuments") in 1795.

Following these examples, several art museums were also created in the provinces after the Revolution, with the aim of building public collections for the education of artists and citizens, such as that of Reims") in 1794; that of Arras") in 1795; that of Orléans"), in 1797; or that of Grenoble in 1798, which was inaugurated only in 1800, locally taking advantage of the nationalization of the properties of the clergy and the confiscation of those of emigrants. As the Revolution spread abroad, the republican armies brought back to France the treasures of the European collections, including those of the Italian Renaissance, following the treaty of Tolentino signed by Bonaparte in 1797. These works were incorporated into the Louvre and some were partially dispersed by the provincial museums. Under the Consulate "Consulate (France"), other museum creations will follow from the Chaptal decree") of 1801, with the Fine Arts museums of Lyon, Nantes, Marseille"), Strasbourg"), Lille"), Bordeaux, Toulouse"), Dijon, Nancy"), then in 1803 Rouen"), Rennes and Caen"), and also in three cities that will become French, Brussels, Mainz&action=edit&redlink=1 "Musée du Land (Mainz) (not yet written)") and Geneva"), whose collection began in 1804 however will not be open to the public until 1826.[13] The Picardy Museum in Amiens was founded under similar conditions in 1802, the Calvet Museum") in Avignon in 1811, or the museum of Nîmes") in 1821 at the Maison Carrée. This policy also inspired the creation, under the Revolution and the first Empire, of museums in Bologna&action=edit&redlink=1 "Pinacothèque nationale (Bologne) (not yet written)") in 1796, in Amsterdam with the Rijksmuseum in 1798, in Milan with the Pinacoteca di Brera and in Anvers") in 1810; or Venice, including galleries founded in 1807 of the Venetian Academy") were not opened to the general public until 1817.

The 19th century

The century saw a return to Antiquity, as in the era of the Renaissance; but this time, it was the Eastern route that the researchers (often also described as looters) took. Greece was the first destination: from 1812, the crown prince of the kingdom of Bavaria bought statues and other fragments looted in 1811 from the temple of Aphaia in Aegina. To protect them and expose them to the public, he had a "glyptotheque" or sculpture gallery built, the one known as the Munich Glyptotheque, built between 1806 and 1830, obviously, in the purest Greek style, with a portico of fluted columns of the Doric order and which will be inaugurated in 1836. The other European nations quickly took over (and the fashion): in 1816, the British Parliament bought the marbles of the Parthenon in Athens, which had been dismantled and repatriated to the United Kingdom by Lord Elgin, British ambassador in Constantinople. They found refuge in the British Museum, which had also just acquired the friezes from the temple of Apollo "Temple of Apollo (Figalia)") of Bassae. And it will also undergo its transformation into a Greek temple in 1823. And France was not far behind: in 1820, the Marquis de La Riviere, French ambassador in Constantinople, acquired the now famous Venus de Milo, which was always the fortune of the Louvre. Previously, his predecessor, the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier had organized the transfer of the Panathenaean frieze to France.

After Greece, it was Egypt. In 1798, the young General Bonaparte was sent to that country to undermine Britain's power in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Indies. He was accompanied by 160 scientists, astronomers, naturalists, mathematicians, chemists, but also painters, designers or architects responsible for exploring Egypt and better understanding the history, nature and customs of the country. If the military conquest turned out to be a total failure, the scientific expedition was a tremendous success that was the origin of "Egyptomania", in vogue in Europe in the first half of the century. In testimony are two magnificent works, Le Voyage dans la basse et haute Égypte by Vivant Denon (who was a member of the expedition) and above all the monumental Description de l’Égypte, published between 1809 and 1822 in 20 volumes. To bear witness to the riches brought to France, the Egyptian museum of the Louvre was created in 1826, directed by Jean-François Champollion, who that same year had deciphered the hieroglyphics thanks to the Rosetta stone - which had already been exhibited since 1802 in London in the British Museum -, which narrowly followed the creation of the Egyptian Museum in Turin in 1824. The products of the excavations "The Egyptian excavations will also lead to the opening of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 1863, first located in Boulaq"). 1852 and 1854. Among the objects exhibited in this new section of the Louvre were the famous winged bulls of Khorsabad) that frame a door of the museum.

The beginning of the 20th century

The century saw the modernization of museums. At the dawn of the new century, and especially between the two world wars, the institution of the museum was the subject of much criticism: accused of being passé, academic and maintaining confusion, it seemed, in fact, too conservative and did not follow the artistic evolution in progress. Proof of this were the new trends, which like Impressionism were hardly present in the collections. In addition to the Musée du Luxembourg"), the first museum dedicated since 1818 to living artists, few of them had impressionist works actually exhibited. Hence the idea of some to create true museums of "modern art". Grenoble, where he was appointed curator, the first section of modern art. For this, he received donations from living and not yet very famous artists: Matisse, Monet or Picasso. And collectors like Marcel Sembat") bequeathed him the works they had collected. The Grenoble museum quickly became a reference in France, and was even advertised to English-speaking tourists visiting the region. And it was going to be emulated, as in Paris where also in 1919, the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin imposed, in exchange for the legacy of all his collections, the creation of a museum dedicated to his work, the Rodin Museum; and this despite a lively debate parliamentary, in which some felt offended by the immorality of his sculptures and others denied that the state could make a museum of a living artist.

In 1919 and 1920 the two branches of the Museum of Modern Western Painting in Moscow (MNZJ1 and 2), the first in the world dedicated to this period, the N in its name meaning modern in Russian, were opened to the public with the collections nationalized by Lenin of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, whose 800 works were gathered in 1923 in the latter's palace to become the State Museum of Modern Western Art (GMNZI)[14]​ until 1941. In 1927, Claude Monet chose the orangerie in the Tuileries Garden to accommodate the Les Nymphéas cycle, which the painter donated to the state in 1920. The Museum Folkwang in Essen in 1927, the Lodz Art Museum in 1930 and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in 1938 are also among the first museums in Europe to open to the modern avant-garde, while the Musée national d'art moderne"), which although it had already been established in 1937 and was to be inaugurated at the end of 1939, did not actually open its doors until after the war, in 1947.

At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, things were also moving. Between 1929 and 1931, a series of exhibitions dedicated to modern artists were held in New York: Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat. These exhibitions were accompanied, in 1929, by the opening of a permanent museum dedicated especially to these modern masters, European and American, from Gauguin to the present, the MoMa (Museum of Modern Art), which will serve as a school. In France, it was not until the 1940s that new museums dedicated to this type of art were created: in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, two museums of modern art faced each other: the State musée national d'Art moderne) and the city of Paris (musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris). The national museum will bring together the collections of the Luxembourg Museum, which had become too small, with those of the Jeu de Paume, a subsidiary of the former dedicated to foreign schools since 1922, where works by Kandinsky, Picasso and Salvador Dalí were found. Its first director, Jean Cassou, will enrich this new museum with works by Matisse, Picasso, Braque and Brancusi, all of whom were still alive.

Since 1975

Starting in 1975, when competition began in the art market, an impressive series of constructions, extensions and renovations shook the world of museums in metropolises and medium-sized cities, mobilizing the most renowned architects. For example, the Georges Pompidou Center, inaugurated in Paris in 1977. The architects, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, created an open-plan interior, with the functional elements, ducts, stairs, etc., on the outside of the building and visible, as in an industrial facility. The water, air or electricity conduits thus exposed were painted in bold colors. This new layout of the museums made it possible to offer the greatest flexibility to the exhibition of the works. Other museums offer the same arrangement: the Air and Space Museum in Washington, opened in 1975, or the City of Sciences and Industry in Paris, built in the mid-1980s.

This decade also marked the desire to renovate old monuments to transform them into museums or to rehabilitate museums built in the 20th century. Of the first case, two examples from Paris, the Picasso Museum, inaugurated in 1985, located in a hôtel particulier of the century in the Marais district, and the Orsay Museum, inaugurated the following year on the grounds of the old Orsay station") built in 1900. But another example illustrates this case with the Museum of the French Revolution in Vizille, inaugurated in 1984 in the former castle of the Duke of Lesdiguières") but also from the presidents of the French Republic. In the second case, the examples can be multiplied in provinces (Amiens, Rouen, Nantes, Lyon...). In Paris, the most striking example remains the rehabilitation of the old Gallery of Zoology, inaugurated in 1889 but converted in 1994 into the current Grand Gallery of Evolution") after being closed for almost thirty years between 1965 and 1994.[15]​.

In 1978, architect Ieoh Ming Pei built the new wing of the National Gallery in Washington. Composed of two triangular blocks organized around a central patio, it houses exhibition halls and a visual arts study center. In it you can see the motif of the pyramid, used as a skylight, which will later be found in the extension of the Louvre.

These museums, modern or postmodern in appearance, are now organized as cultural centers: in addition to exhibition spaces, permanent or temporary, they house various facilities: research, documentation or restoration centers of works, sometimes public libraries, auditoriums, audiovisual rooms, educational workshops, commercial services, bookstores, boutiques, cafes, restaurants, as well as important surfaces for the reception, information and orientation of visitors. The goal is to attract more visitors. To achieve this, museums offer a wide range of activities, publishing books, producing films or organizing concerts or conferences. In fact, these great museums become multifaceted centers of activity, anchored in the heart of the city and characteristic of a moment in which the spiritual and consumption are closely intertwined in what is called "cultural life."

Contenido

La clasificación de los museos es útil para fines organizativos y estadísticos. A fin de establecer a qué tipo pertenece cada museo se atiende a varios criterios: titularidad, ámbito geográfico de cobertura de las colecciones y contenido temático de las propias colecciones.

El Consejo Internacional de Museos (ICOM) estableció una clasificación según el contenido temático de las colecciones en siete categorías:.

art museums

An art gallery or art museum is a space for the exhibition and promotion of art, especially visual art, and mainly painting and sculpture, similar to a museum (pinacotheca, gliptoteca, etc.).

The concept is also used to designate the establishment that, in addition to exhibiting and promoting works of art, is dedicated to their sale, then generally being a smaller space (equivalent to any other commercial premises) and limiting the exhibition period to a certain time, after which the "exhibition" is dismantled and a new one is set up. The craft and technique of its management is called gallerism.

In this category it is possible to characterize Museums of Plastic Reproductions, in which the works exhibited are replicas of original works, made with the purpose of achieving a rapprochement between people and the works, through a reproduction of the same.

Natural history museums

Museums of natural history and natural sciences often display specimens and samples from the natural world. The focus is on nature and culture. Exhibits can educate the public about paleontology, ancient history, and anthropology. Biological evolution, environmental issues and biodiversity are the main areas in natural science museums.

Among the most famous natural history museums in the world are examples such as those in London "Natural History Museum (London)"), Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Vienna, Washington, New York, Pittsburgh or Chicago. They are study and research centers that have contributed powerfully and effectively to the development of science as well as providing important work spaces for intellectuals who have placed these scientific institutes at a high level of performance.

Archaeological museums

Archaeological museums are institutions that investigate, conserve, exhibit and inform about archaeological heritage, understood as those vestiges resulting from human activity and those organic and inorganic remains that, through the methods and techniques of archeology and other related sciences, allow us to reconstruct and make known the origins and past sociocultural trajectories and guarantee their conservation and restoration.

Among its activities are carrying out archaeological research, as well as conserving, systematizing, analyzing, understanding, exhibiting and explaining the archaeological objects that constitute an important part of the cultural heritage of the past.[18]​.

Monographic museums

The vast majority are regionally owned and operated at a local level, although state-owned museums with regional management also appear. Its mission is to disseminate and study those most relevant sociocultural facts, from a more or less remote past, and that have been unique in the historical development of a region or community.

As a general rule, they tend to be collections on very specific aspects, and where the donation of remains sometimes takes a large part. In some way it is about rescuing and recording cultural aspects, daily activities or events of a region to highlight them through dissemination in these centers. Ethnographic museums, interpretation centers, etc.

Historical museums

Historical or History museums are all those whose collections have been conceived and presented within a historical perspective. Some cover specialized aspects such as those related to a specific location, while others are more general. These museums contain a variety of objects, including documents, artifacts of all kinds, art, archaeological objects. Antique museums are more specialized in archaeological finds.

According to UNESCO, "this category includes museums, houses and historical monuments in open-air museums that evoke or illustrate certain events in national history."

A common type of history museum is a historic house. A historic house can be a building of special architectural interest, birthplace or home of a famous person, or simply a building with a privileged location such as the House of European History located in the European quarter of Brussels.

Historical sites can also be turned into museums, particularly those marking public crimes, such as S-21 or Robben Island. Another type of history museum is the living museum. A living museum where people can recreate a time period, including buildings, clothing and language. It is similar to historical reenactment.

Science and technology museums

Science and technology museums revolve around scientific and technical achievements and their history. Some museums may have monographic exhibitions on topics such as computing, aviation, railways, physics or astronomy.

Science museums, in particular, often have demonstrations of some physical principles, many interactive, or may consist of planetariums, with an exhibition space, usually around a dome. These museums may have IMAX rooms, which allow viewing in 3D or higher image quality.

Virtual museums are usually websites belonging to real museums and containing photo galleries of items found in real museums. This new presentation is very useful for people who live far away who want to see the content of these museums.

Accessibility

Museums, especially those housed in old buildings, may have architectural barriers that prevent people with reduced mobility from accessing them. These barriers are justified by the heritage value of the building or conservation of the original appearance.

For a museum or art gallery to be accessible, it must present circulation areas differentiated from exhibition areas by combining different textures and colors on the pavement. In the different rooms, schematic plans in high relief, braille system "Braille (reading)") and good visual contrast must be shown, to facilitate the recognition of the spaces and their distribution. They must install magnetic loops that improve the auditory signal for people who are hard of hearing or have cochlear implants.

Museums and exhibition halls must allow physical accessibility to the collections, even facilitating touch when possible without damaging the originals or making models that allow the content to be identified.

Museums must have audio guides adapted for blind and visually impaired people. This system consists of a digital player, with an adapted keyboard to be able to select the different options and a headphone system to allow your hands to be free and to be able to play the accessible pieces. The information necessary to navigate the route and the audio descriptions of the selected pieces will be recorded on this device. To meet the needs of deaf people, there is a similar player called a sign guide, in which information about the museum's works is shown through videos in sign language and with subtitles. In museums or exhibition halls where the explanation of the collection is carried out by a guide, the guide must have knowledge of sign language or have a L.S.E. Interpreter.

Security

Today's museums have several security measures to protect their contents (depending on their budget):.

• - Closed circuit television: security cameras that constantly record the museum rooms.

• - Showcases: they protect paintings and sculptures from the outside, in addition to keeping them at a constant temperature.

• - Passive infrared: capture sources of heat emission, for example, the human body.

• - Volumetric detectors: they record everything from the presence of intruders to temperature changes.

• - Laser curtains: constant light beams that protect what is exhibited.

• - Magnetic fields: they detect when something passes through them.

• - Weight detectors: protect by detecting variations in the weight of what is on them, activating the alarm.

• - Smoke detectors and other devices to prevent fires.

• - Dogs trained to detect bombs.

Future expectations

Nowadays, for any architect, the construction of museums has become, if not a priority, then a professional goal. On the other hand, on a political level, in Western countries they are one of the main cultural references, a trend that began in the last decades of the last century and that moves thousands of tourists every year. However, this new situation is not exempt from a series of problems that we are going to try to analyze and that began to arise in the century:.

1. • Museums, the result of a new social pressure, have gone from being mere deposits, containers of treasures worthy of devotion, to being required to have a living, changing, renewing dynamic. Exhibitions that remain unchanged over time are no longer valid, but rather society demands novelties, both in terms of exhibitions and regarding their content. This has caused them to stop being as static as they once were.

2. • Another fundamental aspect that museums have currently been incorporating is their didactic value, the educational projection that emerges from your visit. Many departments and teaching offices have appeared with the aim of disseminating the content of the collections. The publication of didactic texts, the incorporation of new and better prepared educators, the organization of seminars, courses, conferences from the museum... is a reflection of all this. «Recomposing the thread that runs through the entire modern history of museums, we realize that both today and in the 19th and 20th centuries, what ultimately justifies the institution of museums is their permanent commitment to education. Education is inherent to the institution called a museum. (BALLART, J., 2007: 215-216).

3. • The scientific dimension that emerges from it is also essential. The research carried out in them results in a multitude of scientific publications, periodical magazines, monographs, etc.

4. • On the other hand, as a result of this social pressure, the participation of visitors is increasing. New technologies,[19]​ especially audiovisual technologies, are gaining an importance that was non-existent until recently as a means of dissemination and knowledge. And a crucial role in this sense is played by the websites of the different museums, which are increasingly complete, with a greater number of applications and with a special appeal as they are accessible from any place with an internet connection. An attraction that, on the other hand, will never replace in-person attendance at a good museum collection.

5. • «A museum full of visitors is a museum that is in good health.» S. Dillon Ripley. Much has been said about the educational value, conservation and preservation of heritage, the documentation and registration functions and the informative nature of museums, but few references express the enormous impact that these cultural companies have on economies. In his book, , author Philip Kotler analyzes, among other aspects, how museums have become powerful industries capable of generating a huge amount of money for local economies, in the form of overnight stays in hotels in the area, restaurants, transportation, etc. To cite a valuable example, the exhibition on Cézanne organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1996 attracted 550,000 visitors over a period of three weeks, which generated 10,000 overnight stays in hotels and additional income of 86.5 million euros for the city.[20] Thus, to the traditional functions attributed to museums, another role of great strategic significance could be added, from the point of view of from an economic point of view for a city. Let no one tear their clothes, but the truth is that we will have to be very attentive to this capacity assumed as a driving force and development of local economies. Without a doubt, museums have become powerful centers of great tourist attraction and never before have they managed to attract so many audiences. The debate raised will be whether the new role can blur the focus of the institutions regarding their mission and their discourse.

The museum is one of the agents of direct dissemination and must be taken into account due to its importance in contact and physical presence with the public, since they are related through exhibitions, cultural promotion departments, educational services and public relations; Furthermore, they cannot forget the variety of audiences that visit them, their interests and reception capacities, which is why museum exhibitions are evaluated through surveys, interviews and tracking, aiming to be able to improve and respond to visitors' concerns.[21]​.

The museum is a means of communication that informs the recipient of information, which in this case is the visitor, or rather the visitors, with their differences, both in academic training and interests.

Says Rendón García, in the Universum. Museum as a means of communication that the museum stopped having as its sole objective to be an institution that conserves objects, that studies them and exhibits them for people to see, to demonstrate that it is a means of communication, that confronts the codes of each person, their values and produces a change on the bases of the value systems of its own and others, collections for example, of human knowledge, whether artistic, historical, scientific and technical, but it is also a means of communication that transmits this knowledge to us, being a participant in education. non-formal and that seeks to contribute to the development of society.

It is important to keep in mind that in museums the communication process is carried out, where the museum is the source, the sender is the curator with the artist, the exhibition is the channel and the message is the work or the object on display and the receiver is the visitor, who provides feedback with their knowledge, their opinions, their participation and even the dissemination of these museums.

This section lists the 20 most visited museums in 2015 as compiled by AECOM and the Themed Entertainment Association's annual report on the world's most visited attractions. museums, respectively.

• - Interpretative center.

• - Ecomuseum.

• - Museology.

• - Museography.

• - Exposure.

• - Dictionnaire des Antiquités Romaines et Grecques. Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Compagnie. Paris, 1883.

• - BALLART HERNÁNDEZ, J. (2007): Museum Manual. Ed. Síntesis, Madrid.

• - CARLOS RICO, J. (2003): The difficult survival of museums. Ed. Trea, Gijón.

• - PAGEL, J. (2015) The museum and copyright in Europe: a survey and recommendations. Ph Magazine, No. 88, 2015, pp. 36-40.

• - PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ, A. E. (2001): "The great museums in the 21st century." In, Tusell, J. (coord.): Museums and Heritage Conservation: Meetings on Heritage. BBVA Foundation. 19-30.

• - Wiktionary has definitions and other information about museum.

• - Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia gallery about Museum.

• - Museodata. Portal of Museology, Cultural Heritage and Conservation and Restoration.

The origin: the Museion of Alexandria (280 BC)

Etimológicamente, el término museo proviene del griego museion, templo y lugar dedicado a las musas, las divinidades inspiradoras de la música y el arte. This term designates the first "museum" built in Alexandria around 280 BC. C. por Ptolomeo I Sóter, fundador de la dinastía griega de los lagidas en Egipto.[4]​ Era un conjunto que servía como santuario y centro de investigación intelectual:.

• - at the material level, it included a large colloquium room "Colloquium (meeting)"), porticoes and a cenacle for meals. In a completely incidental way, the first collection of works of art is installed there.

• - but at that time (3rd-2nd centuries BC), it housed above all a college of scholars pensioned by royal patronage, exempted from the worries of subsistence to dedicate themselves to study. The scholars who frequented it (peripatetic philosophers, philologists, mathematicians, astronomers, geographers, poets) could use a library (the equally famous Library of Alexandria), as well as the botanical and zoological gardens, the astronomical observatory or the anatomy laboratory. They observed nature and texts there. A place of research and study, the museion took up the precepts of Aristotle's Lyceum "Lyceum (philosophical school)" in Greece and made Alexandria the main intellectual center of the Hellenistic era. But with the burning of the library of Alexandria, the monument museion disappeared and with it, the practices it housed.

Latin writers point out the existence of an additional meaning of "museum." Everything seems to indicate that this is what they called grottoes with special characteristics in Roman antiquity, and that, located within the villas, their owners used them to retire to meditate.

There are even older museums, the Ennigaldi-Nanna museum, built by Princess Ennigaldi at the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The site dates from ca. 530 BC C., and contained artifacts from previous Mesopotamian civilizations. It should be noted that a clay drum label – written in three languages ​​– was found at the site, which refers to the history and discovery of a museum object.[5]​[6]​.

The emergence of the "museum"

It was in the Renaissance, especially in Italy, that the galleries where works of art were gathered were called "museum": the word museum preserved (in its Latin form, museum) the idea of ​​places inhabited by the muses. But the meaning that was reborn became more precise in Italy in the second half of the century: the Italian princes were the first to consider the idea of ​​a collection of paintings and sculptures, gathered together, offered to the gaze of travelers and artists in the courtyards and gardens, and later in the galleries (wide corridors that connected different buildings to each other). They associated the notions of a work of art, a collection and an audience (very limited at first because it concerned only the guests of the princes, or very often other princes...), prefiguring the concept of the "museum of the arts."

Erasmus in the dialogue Ciceronianus (1528) described the museums of Rome at that time: «If by chance you happen to see in Rome the “museums” of the Ciceronians, make an effort of memory, I beg you, to remember where you could have seen the image of the Crucified, of the Holy Trinity or of the Apostles. Instead you will have found everywhere the monuments of paganism. And as for the paintings, Jupiter running in the form of golden rain across Danae's chest captures the eyes more than the Archangel Gabriel announcing her divine conception to the Holy Virgin.

At the end of the century, the word "museum" was abandoned in favor of "museum" (although it is noteworthy that in the case of France, although the word for "museum" is musée, the word muséum has been preserved in French as a synonym for "museum of natural history").

The museum and public collection, as we know it today, are an invention of the century and can be considered the fruit of the Enlightenment. In France, in addition to the various royal collections exceptionally open to the visit of the privileged, a "public collection" was formed in 1540 in Lectoure (Gers, today the Musée Eugène-Camoreyt de Lectoure). 1591 to 1840. The first public collection of Roman antiquities was presented in 1614 in the City Hall of Arles, followed by the preparation of the nearby large necropolis of Alyscamps in 1784. But it was not until 1694 that the first public museum in France was inaugurated as such, established in its statutes: it will be in Besançon (in the Franche-Comté), the Musée des beaux-arts et d'archéologie de Besançon. In the rest of the country, it was the Revolution that really established the first modern museums, to make works of art from royal collections or those confiscated from nobles and religious congregations available to citizens. The museum, the official place of art exhibition, became the center of city life. In Paris, the Louvre palace was chosen to become a museum in 1793, after a first presentation of the tableaux du roi in the Luxembourg palace from 1750 to 1779.

Initially a public institution, the "museum" aims to make accessible the entire collective heritage of the Nation, the idea of ​​beauty and knowledge through a selection of objects. The museum shows art, but also science, technology, history and all the new disciplines that brought progress and modernity.

From Antiquity to the Middle Ages

The first collections of art appear in the peristyles of ancient temples. Delphi, the city of oracles, boasted of having a treasure of this kind distributed in as many rooms as there were different towns: the temple of Juno, on Samos, and the Acropolis of Athens were full of masterpieces of art. The successors of Alexander the Great strove to collect sculptures of all kinds. With them they made their triumphal marches more ostentatious and also used them to beautify their capitals: art, on these occasions, gave life and movement to the scene.[8]​.

Rome followed this example. The images of the gods of the defeated peoples were part of the victor's procession and arrived at the same time as the prisoners. Among the Roman emperors, Nero sent 500 statues from Delphi to decorate his imperial palace and increase its luxury and pomp. Public buildings and palaces were tastefully decorated and art mixed there with living nature.

In the Middle Ages, collecting made its appearance, thanks to the treasures of medieval churches and ancient temples that kings and nobles converted into reserves of precious materials. Not to mention the ivories and tapestries that accompanied the nobles from castle to castle. Furthermore, the portraits of a nascent bourgeoisie spread the painting format in Europe, and large historical paintings began to adorn the galleries of the castles that became places of representation and power since the 19th century.

From the Renaissance to the 18th century

At the beginning of the century, Rome only had five ancient marble statues and one bronze. A new era for the arts led by the Medici soon opened in Florence. It was in that stage of the early Renaissance that the idea of ​​the museum re-emerged, a moment in which Antiquity was rediscovered, particularly through the texts of Greek and Roman philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch...). Meanwhile, materials from Antiquity were discovered in the Italian underground, including remains of columns, statues, vases, coins, engraved fragments... which began to be collected. Several noble families from Rome and the rest of Italy participated in this inclination and instigated some excavations that continued with perseverance. Firstly, the popes who, with Sixtus IV, began the collections of the Capitoline Museums in 1471; then humanists and princes, such as Ciriaco of Anconao Niccolò Niccoli, advisor to Cosimo the Elder de Medici, and also noble families such as the Borghese, the Farnese or the Estes; and finally, over time, the wealthy rich who love culture and history. Many collections of medals and antiques were formed throughout Italy. The taste for medals (that is, coins) was joined by that of engraved stones, and Este's family was the first to form a cabinet of engraved stones, whose inscriptions aroused much interest and curiosity. Then they became infatuated with the statues—which remained for a long time as ornaments in the libraries and halls of the princes' palaces and they still liked to see them in open places—and finally a passion arose for portraits of illustrious men, such as Paulo Jovio, who was the first to decide to show his collection of pieces and 400 portraits of important men of his time. In 1521, he presented them in a house built for the occasion in Borgo Vico, near Como. In reference to the museion of Antiquity, he decided to call that place a museum. Cosimo I de' Medici dedicated himself to collecting antiquities and thus laid the foundations of the famous Uffizi gallery, which was inaugurated in 1581.[9] Another Medici, Pope Leo The collections multiplied and will fascinate princes and other curious people. Museums were then going to flourish throughout Europe and everyone saw in this a sign of their power.

From the middle of the century to the 18th century, with the proliferation of exploratory voyages, collections of natural history, or even scientific instruments (such as that of the Elector of Saxony in Dresden), were added to them. This was the golden age of curiosity cabinets. All these collections will be gradually organized by specialties from the end of the century, and will gradually be opened to a wider public than that of princes and scholars. Amerbach's cabinet in Basel was the first open to the public in 1671,[10] followed by the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology in Oxford, which opened its doors in 1683, when the university of that city decided to show to the public the collection that Elias Ashmole had bequeathed to it four years earlier. The building intended to house it thus became the first exhibition site open to the public permanently.[11]​.

Since the century and especially at the beginning of the century, the openings to the public of the hitherto private collections multiplied throughout Europe: in Rome, where the Capitoline Museums were opened to the general public in 1734; in London, with the British Museum opened in 1759; in Florence, with the Uffizi Gallery in 1765; in Rome, even with the Pio-Clementino Museum in 1771, even though the initial core of the collection of the Vatican museums including the Laocoön acquired by Julius II was exposed to the public since 1506 in the patio of statues; in Vienna, with the Belvedere palace, in 1811; in Madrid, the Prado museum, in 1819; in Geneva, with the Rath museum, in 1826; in Munich, with the Alte Pinakothek in 1828, the Munich Glyptotheque in 1830; in Berlin, with the Altes Museum, in 1830, one of the first museums to be installed in a building specially designed for that use;[12] while some princely collections long accessible to privileged visitors were opened to the general public, as in Saint Petersburg, with the Winter Palace, in 1852, or in Dresden, with the Gallery of the Old Masters, in 1855.

In France, the Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology of Besançon had its origin in the bequest, in 1694, of the collections and library of Abbot Boisot"), who gave them on the condition that they be open twice a week to the public. Then, the Cabinet des médailles") was opened to the public in 1720, after its transfer from Versailles to the National Library. In 1750 a true gallery of paintings was created in the Luxembourg Palace, in which the public part of the crown collection was exhibited, which was closed in 1779. After the Revolution saw the opening of the Louvre, on August 10, 1793. Similarly, the National Museum of Natural History of France was created in that same year (from the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants, existing since 1635), the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in 1794 and the Museum of French Monuments") in 1795.

Following these examples, several art museums were also created in the provinces after the Revolution, with the aim of building public collections for the education of artists and citizens, such as that of Reims") in 1794; that of Arras") in 1795; that of Orléans"), in 1797; or that of Grenoble in 1798, which was inaugurated only in 1800, locally taking advantage of the nationalization of the properties of the clergy and the confiscation of those of emigrants. As the Revolution spread abroad, the republican armies brought back to France the treasures of the European collections, including those of the Italian Renaissance, following the treaty of Tolentino signed by Bonaparte in 1797. These works were incorporated into the Louvre and some were partially dispersed by the provincial museums. Under the Consulate "Consulate (France"), other museum creations will follow from the Chaptal decree") of 1801, with the Fine Arts museums of Lyon, Nantes, Marseille"), Strasbourg"), Lille"), Bordeaux, Toulouse"), Dijon, Nancy"), then in 1803 Rouen"), Rennes and Caen"), and also in three cities that will become French, Brussels, Mainz&action=edit&redlink=1 "Musée du Land (Mainz) (not yet written)") and Geneva"), whose collection began in 1804 however will not be open to the public until 1826.[13] The Picardy Museum in Amiens was founded under similar conditions in 1802, the Calvet Museum") in Avignon in 1811, or the museum of Nîmes") in 1821 at the Maison Carrée. This policy also inspired the creation, under the Revolution and the first Empire, of museums in Bologna&action=edit&redlink=1 "Pinacothèque nationale (Bologne) (not yet written)") in 1796, in Amsterdam with the Rijksmuseum in 1798, in Milan with the Pinacoteca di Brera and in Anvers") in 1810; or Venice, including galleries founded in 1807 of the Venetian Academy") were not opened to the general public until 1817.

The 19th century

The century saw a return to Antiquity, as in the era of the Renaissance; but this time, it was the Eastern route that the researchers (often also described as looters) took. Greece was the first destination: from 1812, the crown prince of the kingdom of Bavaria bought statues and other fragments looted in 1811 from the temple of Aphaia in Aegina. To protect them and expose them to the public, he had a "glyptotheque" or sculpture gallery built, the one known as the Munich Glyptotheque, built between 1806 and 1830, obviously, in the purest Greek style, with a portico of fluted columns of the Doric order and which will be inaugurated in 1836. The other European nations quickly took over (and the fashion): in 1816, the British Parliament bought the marbles of the Parthenon in Athens, which had been dismantled and repatriated to the United Kingdom by Lord Elgin, British ambassador in Constantinople. They found refuge in the British Museum, which had also just acquired the friezes from the temple of Apollo "Temple of Apollo (Figalia)") of Bassae. And it will also undergo its transformation into a Greek temple in 1823. And France was not far behind: in 1820, the Marquis de La Riviere, French ambassador in Constantinople, acquired the now famous Venus de Milo, which was always the fortune of the Louvre. Previously, his predecessor, the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier had organized the transfer of the Panathenaean frieze to France.

After Greece, it was Egypt. In 1798, the young General Bonaparte was sent to that country to undermine Britain's power in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Indies. He was accompanied by 160 scientists, astronomers, naturalists, mathematicians, chemists, but also painters, designers or architects responsible for exploring Egypt and better understanding the history, nature and customs of the country. If the military conquest turned out to be a total failure, the scientific expedition was a tremendous success that was the origin of "Egyptomania", in vogue in Europe in the first half of the century. In testimony are two magnificent works, Le Voyage dans la basse et haute Égypte by Vivant Denon (who was a member of the expedition) and above all the monumental Description de l’Égypte, published between 1809 and 1822 in 20 volumes. To bear witness to the riches brought to France, the Egyptian museum of the Louvre was created in 1826, directed by Jean-François Champollion, who that same year had deciphered the hieroglyphics thanks to the Rosetta stone - which had already been exhibited since 1802 in London in the British Museum -, which narrowly followed the creation of the Egyptian Museum in Turin in 1824. The products of the excavations "The Egyptian excavations will also lead to the opening of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 1863, first located in Boulaq"). 1852 and 1854. Among the objects exhibited in this new section of the Louvre were the famous winged bulls of Khorsabad) that frame a door of the museum.

The beginning of the 20th century

The century saw the modernization of museums. At the dawn of the new century, and especially between the two world wars, the institution of the museum was the subject of much criticism: accused of being passé, academic and maintaining confusion, it seemed, in fact, too conservative and did not follow the artistic evolution in progress. Proof of this were the new trends, which like Impressionism were hardly present in the collections. In addition to the Musée du Luxembourg"), the first museum dedicated since 1818 to living artists, few of them had impressionist works actually exhibited. Hence the idea of some to create true museums of "modern art". Grenoble, where he was appointed curator, the first section of modern art. For this, he received donations from living and not yet very famous artists: Matisse, Monet or Picasso. And collectors like Marcel Sembat") bequeathed him the works they had collected. The Grenoble museum quickly became a reference in France, and was even advertised to English-speaking tourists visiting the region. And it was going to be emulated, as in Paris where also in 1919, the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin imposed, in exchange for the legacy of all his collections, the creation of a museum dedicated to his work, the Rodin Museum; and this despite a lively debate parliamentary, in which some felt offended by the immorality of his sculptures and others denied that the state could make a museum of a living artist.

In 1919 and 1920 the two branches of the Museum of Modern Western Painting in Moscow (MNZJ1 and 2), the first in the world dedicated to this period, the N in its name meaning modern in Russian, were opened to the public with the collections nationalized by Lenin of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, whose 800 works were gathered in 1923 in the latter's palace to become the State Museum of Modern Western Art (GMNZI)[14]​ until 1941. In 1927, Claude Monet chose the orangerie in the Tuileries Garden to accommodate the Les Nymphéas cycle, which the painter donated to the state in 1920. The Museum Folkwang in Essen in 1927, the Lodz Art Museum in 1930 and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in 1938 are also among the first museums in Europe to open to the modern avant-garde, while the Musée national d'art moderne"), which although it had already been established in 1937 and was to be inaugurated at the end of 1939, did not actually open its doors until after the war, in 1947.

At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, things were also moving. Between 1929 and 1931, a series of exhibitions dedicated to modern artists were held in New York: Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat. These exhibitions were accompanied, in 1929, by the opening of a permanent museum dedicated especially to these modern masters, European and American, from Gauguin to the present, the MoMa (Museum of Modern Art), which will serve as a school. In France, it was not until the 1940s that new museums dedicated to this type of art were created: in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, two museums of modern art faced each other: the State musée national d'Art moderne) and the city of Paris (musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris). The national museum will bring together the collections of the Luxembourg Museum, which had become too small, with those of the Jeu de Paume, a subsidiary of the former dedicated to foreign schools since 1922, where works by Kandinsky, Picasso and Salvador Dalí were found. Its first director, Jean Cassou, will enrich this new museum with works by Matisse, Picasso, Braque and Brancusi, all of whom were still alive.

Since 1975

Starting in 1975, when competition began in the art market, an impressive series of constructions, extensions and renovations shook the world of museums in metropolises and medium-sized cities, mobilizing the most renowned architects. For example, the Georges Pompidou Center, inaugurated in Paris in 1977. The architects, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, created an open-plan interior, with the functional elements, ducts, stairs, etc., on the outside of the building and visible, as in an industrial facility. The water, air or electricity conduits thus exposed were painted in bold colors. This new layout of the museums made it possible to offer the greatest flexibility to the exhibition of the works. Other museums offer the same arrangement: the Air and Space Museum in Washington, opened in 1975, or the City of Sciences and Industry in Paris, built in the mid-1980s.

This decade also marked the desire to renovate old monuments to transform them into museums or to rehabilitate museums built in the 20th century. Of the first case, two examples from Paris, the Picasso Museum, inaugurated in 1985, located in a hôtel particulier of the century in the Marais district, and the Orsay Museum, inaugurated the following year on the grounds of the old Orsay station") built in 1900. But another example illustrates this case with the Museum of the French Revolution in Vizille, inaugurated in 1984 in the former castle of the Duke of Lesdiguières") but also from the presidents of the French Republic. In the second case, the examples can be multiplied in provinces (Amiens, Rouen, Nantes, Lyon...). In Paris, the most striking example remains the rehabilitation of the old Gallery of Zoology, inaugurated in 1889 but converted in 1994 into the current Grand Gallery of Evolution") after being closed for almost thirty years between 1965 and 1994.[15]​.

In 1978, architect Ieoh Ming Pei built the new wing of the National Gallery in Washington. Composed of two triangular blocks organized around a central patio, it houses exhibition halls and a visual arts study center. In it you can see the motif of the pyramid, used as a skylight, which will later be found in the extension of the Louvre.

These museums, modern or postmodern in appearance, are now organized as cultural centers: in addition to exhibition spaces, permanent or temporary, they house various facilities: research, documentation or restoration centers of works, sometimes public libraries, auditoriums, audiovisual rooms, educational workshops, commercial services, bookstores, boutiques, cafes, restaurants, as well as important surfaces for the reception, information and orientation of visitors. The goal is to attract more visitors. To achieve this, museums offer a wide range of activities, publishing books, producing films or organizing concerts or conferences. In fact, these great museums become multifaceted centers of activity, anchored in the heart of the city and characteristic of a moment in which the spiritual and consumption are closely intertwined in what is called "cultural life."

Contenido

La clasificación de los museos es útil para fines organizativos y estadísticos. A fin de establecer a qué tipo pertenece cada museo se atiende a varios criterios: titularidad, ámbito geográfico de cobertura de las colecciones y contenido temático de las propias colecciones.

El Consejo Internacional de Museos (ICOM) estableció una clasificación según el contenido temático de las colecciones en siete categorías:.

art museums

An art gallery or art museum is a space for the exhibition and promotion of art, especially visual art, and mainly painting and sculpture, similar to a museum (pinacotheca, gliptoteca, etc.).

The concept is also used to designate the establishment that, in addition to exhibiting and promoting works of art, is dedicated to their sale, then generally being a smaller space (equivalent to any other commercial premises) and limiting the exhibition period to a certain time, after which the "exhibition" is dismantled and a new one is set up. The craft and technique of its management is called gallerism.

In this category it is possible to characterize Museums of Plastic Reproductions, in which the works exhibited are replicas of original works, made with the purpose of achieving a rapprochement between people and the works, through a reproduction of the same.

Natural history museums

Museums of natural history and natural sciences often display specimens and samples from the natural world. The focus is on nature and culture. Exhibits can educate the public about paleontology, ancient history, and anthropology. Biological evolution, environmental issues and biodiversity are the main areas in natural science museums.

Among the most famous natural history museums in the world are examples such as those in London "Natural History Museum (London)"), Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Vienna, Washington, New York, Pittsburgh or Chicago. They are study and research centers that have contributed powerfully and effectively to the development of science as well as providing important work spaces for intellectuals who have placed these scientific institutes at a high level of performance.

Archaeological museums

Archaeological museums are institutions that investigate, conserve, exhibit and inform about archaeological heritage, understood as those vestiges resulting from human activity and those organic and inorganic remains that, through the methods and techniques of archeology and other related sciences, allow us to reconstruct and make known the origins and past sociocultural trajectories and guarantee their conservation and restoration.

Among its activities are carrying out archaeological research, as well as conserving, systematizing, analyzing, understanding, exhibiting and explaining the archaeological objects that constitute an important part of the cultural heritage of the past.[18]​.

Monographic museums

The vast majority are regionally owned and operated at a local level, although state-owned museums with regional management also appear. Its mission is to disseminate and study those most relevant sociocultural facts, from a more or less remote past, and that have been unique in the historical development of a region or community.

As a general rule, they tend to be collections on very specific aspects, and where the donation of remains sometimes takes a large part. In some way it is about rescuing and recording cultural aspects, daily activities or events of a region to highlight them through dissemination in these centers. Ethnographic museums, interpretation centers, etc.

Historical museums

Historical or History museums are all those whose collections have been conceived and presented within a historical perspective. Some cover specialized aspects such as those related to a specific location, while others are more general. These museums contain a variety of objects, including documents, artifacts of all kinds, art, archaeological objects. Antique museums are more specialized in archaeological finds.

According to UNESCO, "this category includes museums, houses and historical monuments in open-air museums that evoke or illustrate certain events in national history."

A common type of history museum is a historic house. A historic house can be a building of special architectural interest, birthplace or home of a famous person, or simply a building with a privileged location such as the House of European History located in the European quarter of Brussels.

Historical sites can also be turned into museums, particularly those marking public crimes, such as S-21 or Robben Island. Another type of history museum is the living museum. A living museum where people can recreate a time period, including buildings, clothing and language. It is similar to historical reenactment.

Science and technology museums

Science and technology museums revolve around scientific and technical achievements and their history. Some museums may have monographic exhibitions on topics such as computing, aviation, railways, physics or astronomy.

Science museums, in particular, often have demonstrations of some physical principles, many interactive, or may consist of planetariums, with an exhibition space, usually around a dome. These museums may have IMAX rooms, which allow viewing in 3D or higher image quality.

Virtual museums are usually websites belonging to real museums and containing photo galleries of items found in real museums. This new presentation is very useful for people who live far away who want to see the content of these museums.

Accessibility

Museums, especially those housed in old buildings, may have architectural barriers that prevent people with reduced mobility from accessing them. These barriers are justified by the heritage value of the building or conservation of the original appearance.

For a museum or art gallery to be accessible, it must present circulation areas differentiated from exhibition areas by combining different textures and colors on the pavement. In the different rooms, schematic plans in high relief, braille system "Braille (reading)") and good visual contrast must be shown, to facilitate the recognition of the spaces and their distribution. They must install magnetic loops that improve the auditory signal for people who are hard of hearing or have cochlear implants.

Museums and exhibition halls must allow physical accessibility to the collections, even facilitating touch when possible without damaging the originals or making models that allow the content to be identified.

Museums must have audio guides adapted for blind and visually impaired people. This system consists of a digital player, with an adapted keyboard to be able to select the different options and a headphone system to allow your hands to be free and to be able to play the accessible pieces. The information necessary to navigate the route and the audio descriptions of the selected pieces will be recorded on this device. To meet the needs of deaf people, there is a similar player called a sign guide, in which information about the museum's works is shown through videos in sign language and with subtitles. In museums or exhibition halls where the explanation of the collection is carried out by a guide, the guide must have knowledge of sign language or have a L.S.E. Interpreter.

Security

Today's museums have several security measures to protect their contents (depending on their budget):.

• - Closed circuit television: security cameras that constantly record the museum rooms.

• - Showcases: they protect paintings and sculptures from the outside, in addition to keeping them at a constant temperature.

• - Passive infrared: capture sources of heat emission, for example, the human body.

• - Volumetric detectors: they record everything from the presence of intruders to temperature changes.

• - Laser curtains: constant light beams that protect what is exhibited.

• - Magnetic fields: they detect when something passes through them.

• - Weight detectors: protect by detecting variations in the weight of what is on them, activating the alarm.

• - Smoke detectors and other devices to prevent fires.

• - Dogs trained to detect bombs.

Future expectations

Nowadays, for any architect, the construction of museums has become, if not a priority, then a professional goal. On the other hand, on a political level, in Western countries they are one of the main cultural references, a trend that began in the last decades of the last century and that moves thousands of tourists every year. However, this new situation is not exempt from a series of problems that we are going to try to analyze and that began to arise in the century:.

1. • Museums, the result of a new social pressure, have gone from being mere deposits, containers of treasures worthy of devotion, to being required to have a living, changing, renewing dynamic. Exhibitions that remain unchanged over time are no longer valid, but rather society demands novelties, both in terms of exhibitions and regarding their content. This has caused them to stop being as static as they once were.

2. • Another fundamental aspect that museums have currently been incorporating is their didactic value, the educational projection that emerges from your visit. Many departments and teaching offices have appeared with the aim of disseminating the content of the collections. The publication of didactic texts, the incorporation of new and better prepared educators, the organization of seminars, courses, conferences from the museum... is a reflection of all this. «Recomposing the thread that runs through the entire modern history of museums, we realize that both today and in the 19th and 20th centuries, what ultimately justifies the institution of museums is their permanent commitment to education. Education is inherent to the institution called a museum. (BALLART, J., 2007: 215-216).

3. • The scientific dimension that emerges from it is also essential. The research carried out in them results in a multitude of scientific publications, periodical magazines, monographs, etc.

4. • On the other hand, as a result of this social pressure, the participation of visitors is increasing. New technologies,[19]​ especially audiovisual technologies, are gaining an importance that was non-existent until recently as a means of dissemination and knowledge. And a crucial role in this sense is played by the websites of the different museums, which are increasingly complete, with a greater number of applications and with a special appeal as they are accessible from any place with an internet connection. An attraction that, on the other hand, will never replace in-person attendance at a good museum collection.

5. • «A museum full of visitors is a museum that is in good health.» S. Dillon Ripley. Much has been said about the educational value, conservation and preservation of heritage, the documentation and registration functions and the informative nature of museums, but few references express the enormous impact that these cultural companies have on economies. In his book, , author Philip Kotler analyzes, among other aspects, how museums have become powerful industries capable of generating a huge amount of money for local economies, in the form of overnight stays in hotels in the area, restaurants, transportation, etc. To cite a valuable example, the exhibition on Cézanne organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1996 attracted 550,000 visitors over a period of three weeks, which generated 10,000 overnight stays in hotels and additional income of 86.5 million euros for the city.[20] Thus, to the traditional functions attributed to museums, another role of great strategic significance could be added, from the point of view of from an economic point of view for a city. Let no one tear their clothes, but the truth is that we will have to be very attentive to this capacity assumed as a driving force and development of local economies. Without a doubt, museums have become powerful centers of great tourist attraction and never before have they managed to attract so many audiences. The debate raised will be whether the new role can blur the focus of the institutions regarding their mission and their discourse.

The museum is one of the agents of direct dissemination and must be taken into account due to its importance in contact and physical presence with the public, since they are related through exhibitions, cultural promotion departments, educational services and public relations; Furthermore, they cannot forget the variety of audiences that visit them, their interests and reception capacities, which is why museum exhibitions are evaluated through surveys, interviews and tracking, aiming to be able to improve and respond to visitors' concerns.[21]​.

The museum is a means of communication that informs the recipient of information, which in this case is the visitor, or rather the visitors, with their differences, both in academic training and interests.

Says Rendón García, in the Universum. Museum as a means of communication that the museum stopped having as its sole objective to be an institution that conserves objects, that studies them and exhibits them for people to see, to demonstrate that it is a means of communication, that confronts the codes of each person, their values and produces a change on the bases of the value systems of its own and others, collections for example, of human knowledge, whether artistic, historical, scientific and technical, but it is also a means of communication that transmits this knowledge to us, being a participant in education. non-formal and that seeks to contribute to the development of society.

It is important to keep in mind that in museums the communication process is carried out, where the museum is the source, the sender is the curator with the artist, the exhibition is the channel and the message is the work or the object on display and the receiver is the visitor, who provides feedback with their knowledge, their opinions, their participation and even the dissemination of these museums.

This section lists the 20 most visited museums in 2015 as compiled by AECOM and the Themed Entertainment Association's annual report on the world's most visited attractions. museums, respectively.

• - Interpretative center.

• - Ecomuseum.

• - Museology.

• - Museography.

• - Exposure.

• - Dictionnaire des Antiquités Romaines et Grecques. Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Compagnie. Paris, 1883.

• - BALLART HERNÁNDEZ, J. (2007): Museum Manual. Ed. Síntesis, Madrid.

• - CARLOS RICO, J. (2003): The difficult survival of museums. Ed. Trea, Gijón.

• - PAGEL, J. (2015) The museum and copyright in Europe: a survey and recommendations. Ph Magazine, No. 88, 2015, pp. 36-40.

• - PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ, A. E. (2001): "The great museums in the 21st century." In, Tusell, J. (coord.): Museums and Heritage Conservation: Meetings on Heritage. BBVA Foundation. 19-30.

• - Wiktionary has definitions and other information about museum.

• - Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia gallery about Museum.

• - Museodata. Portal of Museology, Cultural Heritage and Conservation and Restoration.