Types of Museums

I like many kinds of museums. But there's one type of museum I am definitely not big on, and that's the ones that are filled with artifacts and relics. Could be a history museum or an archaeology museum. I just don't find any pleasure in looking at hundreds of arrowheads or old jewels or shards of pottery.

I do like history museums when they bring alive and help me learn about an era, but not if they're just filled with objects from that era.

History museums and art museums. My favorites are the British Museum, Vatican Museum and anything in Florence.

I like art museums - even if the particular art on display isn’t my favorite I like seeing it and learning a bit about it.

I like actual archaeology/history sights like the colosseum or Greek ruins but archaeology museums are hit or miss. Ones that put sights into context and feature good art from the sight /culture (like Naples archaeology museum, capitoline, acropolis museum) are great. Ones that are just rows of tiny artifacts aren’t my thing.

I almost never like historic house museums. The fact so-and-so was born in this room and had that furniture is just not interesting 99% of the time. Give me a history museum about that person’s accomplishments or an art museum with their work. I’m sure there are exceptions but in general...not for me.

My interests are catholic ( defined as wide ranging , not ecclesiastical ) in nature , and my perspective is that museums of all kinds intersect with the focus of a particular subject . Whether it is art , architecture , science , history ,etc. Living in NY City , I am fortunate to have at my disposal, a vast number of institutions in the the NYC and New England area , Maintaining memberships in many , they are varied from art museums ( Metropolitan Museum , NY Historical Society ) to those dedicated to subjects involving other aspects of life ( Mystic Seaport , Mystic CT , Newport Historical Society , Rhode Island , Historic New England ( preservation of New England life and antiquities ) ) In Europe , in addition to the myriad art museums , I visit with regularity , I have spent time in places as varied as mining sites in Cornwall , whole days spent at The National Railway Museum , in York , and The Museum of Silesian Life , in Gorlitz , Germany . The list is unending , but museums of all types explain and educate about their holdings , and thus increase and improve one's grasp and understanding when encountering these subjects in situ . A final example - seeing the Duomo in Florence is magnificent , but one's appreciation grows immeasurably , when combined with the cathedral's museum , just down the street ,

I love museums; mostly art, history and archaeological ones. I enjoy living history museums as well as house museums...less about the person represented, as for the decor and progress of the period. Though I do review the areas on ancient military and guns in a 'mixed' museum, but I have no interest in an entire museum on that subject. Natural history or science museums are okay, but I never visit them on my own and particularly not when traveling.
Upper Canada Village is a living history museum an hour or so from Ottawa, and I enjoy it a lot. Every Fall, our quilt guild participates in a quilt show there and I often volunteer just so I can spend the day there around my shift. Part of me would love to be closer so I could become a docent - in 1860's garb.
I love the Frick in NYC. Not quite as much, I love the Isabella Gardener Museum in Boston....but it drove me nuts to not have explanations of what I saw...and I understand that she cobbled together pieces from different eras to be 'pleasing'. The Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid was a pleasant surprise. The 3 have the common theme of people with a boat load of money buying art for their personal pleasure and then sharing it with the world. Thank goodness they did.
(on an aside and just having to pout with those who will understand....my one day in Naples in 2021 is a Tuesday. The National Archaeological Museum is closed. I am bummed :-( )

One of the best I've been to was the exhibit inside the lower level of the Statue of Liberty.
Very moving, and so interesting with much info about immigrants, and of course the building of the statue itself.

I do like history museums when they bring alive and help me learn
about an era, but not if they're just filled with objects from that
era.

I agree. Shards of pottery or a small medallion are fine if it's part of a larger exhibit, but to make it a standalone display doesn't really work for the average person. A museum needs to tell stories and draw people in to care about what they're seeing. I think that for all museums. Pompeii is just piles of rubble without a story, I'd even say the Vatican would have meant nothing to me without a guide to give me the history behind the art.

I like all kinds of museums IF they are well done - creative, quality displays and signage that explains why it's important, tells a story, etc.. I particularly like ones that offer an audio device - Stonehenge, Roman baths in Bath, Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. Lots more.

Great question!

I particularly enjoy museums, and using "museums" fairly broadly, that focus on two topics: history and transport (the latter of which is my professional field).

Some examples of museums that I have really liked in Europe that generally fit into these themes are:

• London Transport Museum
• Churchill War Rooms
• Bletchley Park
• Liberation of Paris Museum (the new one near Denfert-Rochereau)
• Berlin Wall Memorial
• the East-German themed museum at the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin
• the Tränenpalast
• Anne Frank House
• the WWII museum and Tapestry museums in Bayeux

What I know I do not like are, to be quite honest, fine arts and paintings museums -- so I have no real interest in visiting the Louvre, the Prado, the Tate, the Pergamon, etc, except for possibly admiring the architecture.

For a long time, I felt vaguely bad/guilty about this preference, as if I were some sort of uncultured philistine. But I realized that honestly, I have many other interests such as foreign languages, history, transportation, literature -- it's just that fine arts isn't among them.

And (at least in the pre-COVID era) all those museums are crowded enough anyway. They don't need someone like myself who is not really that interested in going to crowd them up!

As a former art history major, art museums, very broadly speaking, are my focus. It is beyond thrilling to see something great in person that I had learned about and seen only in photos. One extreme case of this was seeing Munch's The Scream in Oslo. Another was the gold Sutton Hoo buckle in the British Museum. Another, which illustrates the OP's point about the possible variety of what might count as a museum, was seeing the famous mosaics in San Vitale in Ravenna. A church is not exactly a museum, but sometimes you get this awesome combination of art and architecture that provides a peak aesthetic experience of the sort standard art museums can provide. And then there are the "open-air museums" like Skansen in Stockholm, where many buildings are brought together to illustrate a country's way of life through time, or historical reconstructions like L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, where you can see how (in this case) Vikings lived. Love them all.

But travel has expanded my horizons museum-wise, as well as in the more obvious ways. In Prague, for example, I was really interested in/moved by the Museum of Communism, and other non-art museums are now fair game for the itinerary. The enormous, almost unbelievably comprehensive, Museum of German History in Berlin was fascinating, though wife and I pretty much collapsed at some point in hour three.

Due to the virus wife and I retired a bit early to Maine, and it is great to think that the MFA in Boston, and beyond that the Met in NYC, are no longer all that far away. Can't wait for this virus to be contained.

James , I appreciate your kind remarks , Steve

I’ve been to museums all over the world. The last one I visited and the most impactful was the 9/11 Museum in NYC.

I love ethnographic museums. I can see and understand how people lived their everyday lives, what they did to earn a living, furniture, etc it is interesting and fun. My husband was a merchant marine and in the Navy so he is drawn to nautical museums. We also enjoy the odd museum, such as the place in Markem, Netherlands where a gentleman made various art out of cigar bands. We also love WWII museums and historic homes.

I looked at the list of museum types along with their descriptions. I have to say that I can find something of interest in any of them.

Having said that, and keeping in mind that there are always exceptions, my least favorite kinds of museums are those that feature military history with tons of armor and weapons, and those that are the houses or castles of the rich and famous, glorifying conspicuous consumption. I'm not a big fan of Baroque or Rococo art or architecture, but I do like a few of the pieces of a few of the artists and musicians.

I've never felt the need to see it all in any large museum. Trying to see it all is exhausting, mostly because of the high level of visual input, no matter what the kind of museum.

I do love open air museums that show the living history of the time they are portraying. An early European favorite of mine was one in Denmark. I forget the name, but every house or shed or barn was represented with suitable tools or clothes or decor. But, there was always an anachronism of some sort. Examples I particularly remember are an electric percolator in a 16th or 17th century kitchen area and an electric circular saw in a workshop of the same era. Some exhibit designer had a sense of humor.

A more recent favorite is the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens. For me it's the perfect size and the perfect blend of art, history and culture.

Museums or art or music that encourage me to think and learn and move me tears are rare. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC is one of those. I visited it in the early 1990's, not very long after it opened and I still think about what I saw and learned and felt there.

I have a similar experience when I see Picasso's Guernica. I wish the Reina Sofia in Madrid had a way to study it, not just see it.

On the topic of what a museum can do for us and how the past is not something pinned under glass to be peered at but a challenge to our current convictions, listen to the first few sentences of this acceptance speech by Prof. Sklansky from Berkeley Law, a former federal prosecutor and respected author of keystone texts in legal training, about his debt to the people who taught him 35 years earlier:
https://youtu.be/Lg1PfwEM6TM?t=4877

Your engagement with an exhibit or an artifact or an artwork is an opportunity not just to understand how things were someplace else sometime in the past, but a way to take your own actions and choices seriously in the light of prior recognized greatness. What you look at in museums is not so much more evidence about how to appraise the past but a way to sharpen your awareness of yourself and your own times.

seeing the Duomo in Florence is magnificent , but one's appreciation
grows immeasurably , when combined with the cathedral's museum , just
down the street ,

Another example like this is the Pont du Gard. People oohed and awwed when seeing the bridge, but for me the museum is what tied it altogether. I spent about 1/2 hour looking at the bridge from a bunch of angles, but spent about 2 hours in the museum. It exhibited the construction of the bridge but also about the water and plumbing of Roman cities that used the water that was transported along the line that the Pont du Gard is on.

But there are times when the topic is right and the museum provides
either an extremely moving setting or information is a manner that
really hits home in a moving way that I find myself spending a day in
the museum soaking it all it.

The Hillcrest Museum in the Southwest corner of the province of Manitoba, Canada in the town of Souris-population 1876 can probably count its annual attendance in the hundreds. We had time to kill, so we went in expecting a typical small prairie town Museum with some local history and artifacts. It was as expected until we came to this huge butterfly collection. If I remember correctly, the guy who donated it was a local who had traveled the world for his hobby. It's not something I've ever had an interest in but my kids and I must have spent a couple of hours looking at the butterflys. A gem in the middle of nowhere.

We love all kinds of museums.
Yes, museums devoted to location like the Roman Coliseum are one type, which are great.
Also, love art museums. I have been to so many great art museums in the World, including Hermitage, Lourve, Rijksmuseum, Vatican Museum, Uffizi, Accademia, all the Smithsonian museums in DC, Prado, and more.

Loved the Vasa museum in Stockholm, Museum at the Kremlin in Moscow, Tower of London, Pompeii, the New Acropolis Museum, Archaeological Museums in Athens, Istanbul, Mexico City, and more. Loved the Museum in Taipei, Taiwan with the 1001 Horses.

I've been trying to decide if Oradour-Sur-Glane counts as a museum or a memorial. Whichever it is, that may be the only one that brought emotions out in me. I've never visited a concentration camp but I suspect the feelings may be similar. After about an hour my wife was very uncomfortable and didn't want to stick around anymore. I left feeling mad and sad at the same time.

" I've been trying to decide if Oradour-Sur-Glane counts as a museum or a memorial ." Frankly , I don't think one can make a rigid distinction between the two . Many things tend to cross dividing lines , and this is a perfect example . There are elements of both museum AND memorial here , and that concept is at work elsewhere , as in much of the human condition . The concentration camps also fit this composite . A few years ago , we visited Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery , in St Petersburg , Russia . This sobering site is the resting place of 500,000 citizens of the city who died in the nearly three year siege during the second world war . Surely , a memorial , but the historic component is clear , and present there .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piskaryovskoye_Memorial_Cemetery

Just about any kind of museum, but especially art museums, and within the genre of art museums, those focusing on European painting & sculpture prior to about 1920.

Of course this is just a personal preference, each traveler will have her/his own preferences.

Living in the US Pacific Northwest, we're museum starved for the above kind of museums (okay, Portland Art Museum now actually has one Van Gogh) and there just aren't that many museums around here with great European painting, so we're desperate. It's a treat to go to LA or SF where there are at least a few art museums with famous paintings, and of course even better to go to the Chicago Art Institute, and of course the great art museums in Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia.

my least favorite kinds of museums are those that feature military
history with tons of armor and weapons, and those that are the houses
or castles of the rich and famous, glorifying conspicuous consumption.

It must be in the interpretation. I look at places like the chateaus in the Loire Valley and I don't see it as glorifying the rich and famous, but as an example of how things were and why it lead to the revolution.

I also like exploring living museums. It gives you an idea of how people lived, worked and played at different eras and locations around the world. Most of the ones I've been to have been in Europe. Some of my favorites have been Ballenberg in Switzerland, Otzi-Dorf, an archeological museum in the Otztal Valley, Austria, Schwartzwalder in the Black Forest region of Germany, and an un-named neolithic teaching village somewhere in Hampshire, England. We happened to drive by it and spent a wonderful morning learning about how people lived, grew their food, and built their dwellings during that time period. Fascinating.

Sports Museums are of particular interest to me. My first ever bucket list museum would have been the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. I lived and breathed hockey as a boy growing up in the 70's and thought of it as hockey's most holy place. I finally saw it as an adult in the early 90's and now it's a must-see stop every time I'm in Toronto for business or pleasure. I still want to make it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City and the FIFA World Football Museum in Zurich.

I gravitate toward history (anything from historic castle to the British Museum) and art galleries. I enjoy cultural focus, music, open air, etc., on a case by case basis - some I really like others are disappointing.

As a veteran I probably enjoy military museums more than most.

I shy away from museums with gadgets, toys, puppets, clothing, etc.