A museum is a treasure chest where you can find all kinds of amazing things like dinosaur bones, shiny gold coins, beautiful paintings and even cool stuff from outer space. It’s also a special place where you can learn all about our world, our history and the people who lived in it long ago and today.
Whether you’re traveling to the capital of China or the remote wilderness of Norway, museums offer visitors a chance to step outside their everyday lives and immerse themselves in different cultures through carefully curated collections and transcending exhibitions. For those who think museums are boring, they should know that the world’s best galleries have perfected the art of making history and culture come to life – so much so that people flock to them in droves.
In 2021, Statista analyzed visitor numbers for more than 1,000 museums and found that the top ten most-visited institutions were spread across the globe from New York City to Russia to Taiwan. These include the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of China, each with over 3 million visitors. Several of the top museums are science and natural history venues, including the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.
While these museums have their own unique collections and exhibitions, they all share a commitment to collecting and preserving artifacts, sharing them with the public, and researching and interpreting the objects. This allows them to connect with a wide range of visitors and serve as a vital resource for society.
Aside from their societal benefits, museums have been shown to have many emotional and psychological benefits for their visitors. For example, museums can help alleviate stress and anxiety by offering a space where people can reflect and escape from the noise and busyness of everyday life. They can also encourage empathy by allowing people to explore the objects that are important to others, and by showing how similar we all really are.
As the world becomes increasingly multicultural, museums are becoming a central part of the cultural landscape. They play a crucial role in the global conversation around diversity, identity and heritage, fostering dialogues for human dignity, social justice, and global equality. This is why the definition of a museum was recently updated to include intangible heritage.
This was the result of an intense 18-month process in which hundreds of museum professionals from 126 ICOM National Committees participated. In the end, a draft was compiled that was voted on during the ICOM Extraordinary General Assembly in Prague on August 24th. The definition states that a museum is an institution “in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which researches, collects, conserves, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage for education, study and enjoyment.”
While some museums may feel that the compromise is not progressive enough, or that it’s too tight and limiting, there is room to work within this framework. It is a matter of how each individual museum institutions positions itself, beyond the institutional and legal requirements.
