First Museum in the world

"The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's largest and finest art museums. Its collections include more than two million works of art spanning five thousand years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe.

Founded in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum is located in New York City's Central Park along Fifth Avenue (from 80th to 84th Streets). Nearly five million people visit the Museum each year." ... more

"The National Gallery of Art was created in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of Congress, accepting the gift of financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon. During the 1920s, Mr. Mellon began collecting with the intention of forming a gallery of art for the nation in Washington. In 1937, the year of his death, he promised his collection to the United States. Funds for the construction of the West Building were provided by The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. On March 17, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the completed building and the collections on behalf of the people of the United States of America.

The paintings and works of sculpture given by Andrew Mellon have formed a nucleus of high quality around which the collections have grown. Mr. Mellon's hope that the newly created National Gallery would attract gifts from other collectors was soon realized in the form of major donations of art from Samuel H. Kress, Rush H. Kress, Joseph Widener, Chester Dale, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, and Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch as well as individual gifts from hundreds of other donors..." more

"Rising majestically at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Philadelphia Museum of Art stands as one of the great art institutions of the world. In the over 125 years since its founding, it has grown far beyond the limits originally set for it. Today, the Museum houses over 225,000 works of art encompassing some of the greatest achievements of human creativity, and offers a wealth of exhibitions and educational programs for a public of all ages.

The Museum presents more than 25 exhibitions each year, ranging from comprehensive single-artist retrospectives to historical surveys to focused presentations that explore specific topics. Works of art from the Museum's collections, many not regularly on view, as well as masterpieces on loan from museums worldwide are featured in these installations.

The Museum is home to over 225,000 objects, spanning the creative achievements of the Western world since the first century AD and those of Asia since the third millennium BC. The European holdings date from the Medieval era to the present, and the collection of arms and armor is the second largest in the United States. The American collections are among the finest in the country, as are the expanding collections of modern and contemporary art. In addition, the Museum houses encyclopedic holdings of costume and textiles as well as prints, drawings, and photographs that are displayed in rotation for reasons of preservation." more

"The DIA has been a beacon of culture for the Detroit area for well over a century. Founded in 1885, the museum was originally located on Jefferson Avenue, but, due to its rapidly expanding collection, moved to a larger site on Woodward Avenue in 1927. The new Beaux-Arts building, designed by Paul Cret, was immediately referred to as the "temple of art." Two wings were added in the 1960s and 1970s, and a major renovation and expansion that began in 1999 was completed in 2007.

The museum covers 658,000 square feet that includes more than 100 galleries, a 1,150-seat auditorium, a 380-seat lecture/recital hall, an art reference library, and a state-of-the-art conservation services laboratory.

The DIA's collection is among the top six in the United States, comprising a multicultural and multinational survey of human creativity from prehistory through the 21st century..." more

"The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879 as both a museum and school, first stood on the southwest corner of State and Monroe Streets. It opened on its present site at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street in 1893. Built on rubble from the 1871 Chicago fire, the museum housed a collection of plaster casts and had a visionary purpose: to acquire and exhibit art of all kinds and to conduct programs of education. The collection now encompasses more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world, and the school's graduate program is continually ranked as one of the best in the country. Within the next decade, a new complex will continue this process of growth.

The Art Institute of Chicago collects, preserves, and interprets works of art of the highest quality, representing the world's diverse artistic traditions, for the inspiration and education of the public and in accordance with our profession's highest ethical standards and practices." ... more

"The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) was founded in 1903. In 1984 the Museum moved into its current location, the 370,000-square-foot Edward Larrabee Barnes-designed building, as the first arts organization in the newly designated Arts District. Today, the Dallas Museum of Art ranks among the leading art institutions in the country and is distinguished by its innovative exhibitions and groundbreaking educational programs.

The Museum’s collections contain over 24,000 works of art spanning 5,000 years of human creativity.

The DMA is the only "encyclopedic" (art from all cultures and periods) art museum in North Texas. The Museum is especially known for its arts of the ancient Americas, Africa, Indonesia, and South Asia; European and American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; and American and international contemporary art." ... more

"Located in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, the MFAH is a dynamic cultural complex comprising two gallery buildings, a sculpture garden, visitors center, library, movie theater, gift shop, café, two art schools, and two house museums.

The world awaits you at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The trustees and the entire staff are dedicated to the excellence that distinguishes the MFAH as A Place for All People. (...)

Houston is the only venue for Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. The unprecedented loan exhibition features treasured paintings by all the great names, including Cézanne, Degas, Van Gogh, Monet, and Renoir. In another first, the MFAH presents the retrospective of the work of famed Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez in Color in Space and Time, a groundbreaking visual experience that is one of several shows in conjunction with the 10th-anniversary year of the museum’s Latin American initiative." ... more

"The National Gallery houses the national collection of Western European painting from the 13th to the 19th centuries. It is on show 361 days a year, free of charge.

The Gallery aims to study and care for the collection, while encouraging the widest possible access to the pictures.

The Gallery’s national strategy promotes the understanding, knowledge and appreciation of Old Master paintings throughout the UK. It is our ambition to give these paintings a major role in modern cultural life..." more

"The Kimbell Art Museum is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding architectural achievements of the modern era. Designed by the American architect Louis I. Kahn (1901–1974), the Museum has won wide acclaim for its classic modern building since its opening in 1972. Kahn’s innovative use of natural light and subtle articulation of space and materials greatly enhance the experience of the art. Kahn envisioned a museum with “the luminosity of silver.” In his design, “narrow slits to the sky” (as he described the skylights) admit natural light, which perforated metal reflectors disperse onto the underside of cycloid-shaped vaults and down the walls. Courtyards, lunettes, and light slots vary the quality and intensity of the light. The building’s gracious proportions, fine craftsmanship, and beautiful landscaping add further to the sense of serenity and restraint.

A small collection of less than 350 works, the Kimbell Art Museum has become a byword for quality and importance at the highest level. The Museum’s holdings range in period from antiquity to the 20th century, including European masterpieces from Fra Angelico and Caravaggio to Cézanne and Matisse, and important collections of Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman antiquities, as well as Asian, Mesoamerican, and African arts." ... more

"The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation's first collection of American art, is an unparalleled record of the American experience. The collection captures the aspirations, character and imagination of the American people throughout three centuries. The American Art Museum is the home to one of the largest and most inclusive collections of American art in the world. Its artworks reveal key aspects of America's rich artistic and cultural history from the colonial period to today. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the collection, including major masters, such as John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Helen Frankenthaler, Christo, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Lee Friedlander, Nam June Paik, Martin Puryear, and Robert Rauschenberg.

The Museum has been a leader in identifying significant aspects of American visual culture and actively collecting and exhibiting works of art before many other major public collections. American Art has the largest collection of New Deal art and the finest collections of contemporary craft, American impressionist paintings, and masterpieces from the Gilded Age. Other pioneering collections include historic and contemporary folk art, work by African American and Latino artists, photography from its origins in the nineteenth century to contemporary works, images of western expansion, and realist art from the first half of the twentieth century. In recent years, the Museum has focused on strengthening its contemporary art collection through acquisitions and by commissioning new artworks." ... more

"The Louvre, in its successive architectural metamorphoses, has dominated central Paris since the late 12th century. Built on the city's western edge, the original structure was gradually engulfed as the city grew. The dark fortress of the early days was transformed into the modernized dwelling of François I and, later, the sumptuous palace of the Sun King, Louis XIV.(...)

Heir to the century of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, The Louvre was quickly accepted as the "museum among museums;" and since then it has remained a model and a recognized authority. Founded in 1793 as a museum for all, it celebrates humanity's long journey with the remarkable scope of a collection that spans thousands of years, reaches from America to the borders of India and China, and is highlighted by such iconic, universally admired works as the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Victory of Samothrace" ... more

"In 1748, Henri-Duhamel du Monceau, Inspector-General of the French Navy, presented his collection of model ships and naval machinery to King Louis XV. They were set out in the Marine Room at the Louvre, for the instruction of students of the newly-founded school of naval engineering and architecture.

Today, these objects form the core of the collections of France's maritime museum, the Musée National de la Marine. The museum is, alongside the Central Naval Museum of Saint Petersburg, founded in 1709, the oldest maritime museum in the world

Since 1943, it has stood inside the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, looking across to the Eiffel Tower. With over 40,000 objects in its care, its vocation is to conserve the nation's seafaring heritage.

The museum is a centre for maritime culture. Its collections embrace every aspect of maritime history, from eighteenth-century models to heroic expeditions and the golden age of the ocean liner, ending with the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, and the acquisition and restoration of Eric Tabarly's Pen Duick V, which still sails today." ... more about The Musée National de la Marine

"Throughout the second half of the 19th century, Universal Exhibitions were a regular feature on the calendar of the leading European capitals. The boldness of the organisers' projects challenged architects' imagination and, while it was commonplace for even the most grandiose constructions to be pulled down when the show was over, others like the Eiffel Tower (1889) and the Grand Palais (1900) indelibly modified the Paris skyline.

An opportunity for each nation to showcase its innovations in business, industry and the fine arts, the Universal Exhibitions offered the opportunity for people from all over the world to compete within a peaceful framework. The foreign pavilions added a touch of exoticism and fun, which excited the popular imagination and drew millions of visitors. The first Universal Exhibition took place in 1851 in London, where the Crystal Palace, combining glass and steel, stunned visitors with its transparency, sheer size and original construction techniques. In 1855, Paris staged its first Universal Exhibition and, not to be outdone, built the Palais de l'industrie, inspired by the Crystal Palace, thus demonstrating France's ability to replicate Britain's technical achievement, even adding a stone facade that drew further admiration from the public...

Through its secular history, its magic and polyvalence, the Grand Palais is a popular building that has won the hearts of millions, from celebrities to the man in the street. It still conjures up vivid memories, anecdotes, recollections of singular happenings.

Like Proust's madeleine, the words "Grand Palais" irresistibly trigger off a journey to the heart of memory. Emotional smiles, a twinkle in the eye, nostalgia floods back in anecdotes, souvenirs, interviews, unusual photos that tell the story of the Grand Palais in the more personal, vivid terms of daily life. Here is a selection of testimonies that form our own search for time past…" ... more about The Grand Palais

"The British Museum holds in trust for the nation and the world a collection of art and antiquities from ancient and living cultures

Housed in one of Britain's architectural landmarks, the collection is one of the finest in existence, spanning two million years of human history. Access to the collection is free.

The Museum was based on the practical principle that the collection should be put to public use and be freely accessible. It was also grounded in the Enlightenment idea that human cultures can, despite their differences, understand one another through mutual engagement. The Museum was to be a place where this kind of humane cross-cultural investigation could happen. It still is.

The Museum aims to reach a broader worldwide audience by extending engagement with this audience. This is engagement not only with the collections that the Museum has, but the cultures and territories that they represent, the stories that can be told through them, the diversity of truths that they can unlock and their meaning in the world today.

The Museum has continually sought to make its collections available to greater and more diverse audiences, first in London, subsequently the UK and worldwide. Over the past forty years, the increasing ease of international travel has meant not only that more visitors from abroad can come to London to use the collection, but that the collection can more easily travel to them, and be put to public use in new local contexts." ... more

"Although the various parts of this Soprintendenza Speciale are famous, it is practically unknown as a whole. This is because its parts – at least the best-known – have names that are famous all over the world: the Uffizi Gallery, the Accademia Gallery, the Pitti Palace with its four museums plus the Boboli Gardens, the Bargello National Museum, the Medici Chapels, San Marco: sites housing artistic masterpieces created by celebrated masters including Giotto, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio… The oldest nucleus of these museums and galleries derives from the collections of the Medici family that held power in Florence for three centuries, maintaining patronage and art collecting at the highest levels of excellence. It is precisely thanks to the last of the Medici, the Electress Palatine Anna Maria Luisa, that the Italian State came into possession of the collections – with the proviso that they should remain in Florence – which in 1737 she declared she wished to preserve “for the ornament of the State and the utility of the Public, and to attract the curiosity of Foreigners”, a curiosity that is at the origin of modern tourism.

However, taken as a whole the Soprintendenza is an organic organism dependent on the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities, which directly manages the group of museums, villas and gardens belonging to the Italian State (the so-called “Polo Museale”), while also being responsible for the protection of the artistic, historic and ethno-anthropological heritage belonging to others within the “territory” of the city of Florence." ... more

"The National Archaeological Museum of Athens is the largest archaeological museum in Greece and one of the most important museums in the world devoted to ancient Greek art.

It was founded at the end of the 19th century to house and protect antiquities from all over Greece, thus displaying their historical, cultural and artistic value.

The National Archaeological Museum is the largest museum in Greece and one of the world's great museums. Although its original purpose was to secure all the finds from the nineteenth century excavations in and around Athens, it gradually became the central National Archaeological Museum and was enriched with finds from all over Greece. Its abundant collections, with more than 11,000 exhibits, provide a panorama of Greek civilization from the beginnings of Prehistory to Late Antiquity.

The museum is housed in an imposing neoclassical building of the end of the nineteenth century, which was designed by L. Lange and remodelled by Ernst Ziller. The vast exhibition space - numerous galleries on each floor accounting for a total of 8,000 square metres - house five large permanent collections: The Prehistoric Collection, which includes works of the great civilizations that developped in the Aegean from the sixth millennium BC to 1050 BC (Neolithic, Cycladic, Mycenaean), and finds from the prehistoric settlement at Thera. The Sculptures Collection, which shows the development of ancient Greek sculpture from the seventh to the fifth centuries BC with unique masterpieces. The Vase and Minor Objects Collection, which contains representative works of ancient Greek pottery from the eleventh century BC to the Roman period and includes the Stathatos Collection, a corpus of minor objects of all periods. The Metallurgy Collection, with many fundamental statues, figurines and minor objects. And, finally, the only Egyptian and Near Eastern Antiquities Collection in Greece, with works dating from the pre-dynastic period (5000 BC) to the Roman conquest." ... more

"The National Archaeological Museum of Naples, one of the first made in Europe in the seventeenth century monumental building in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, boasts the richest and most valuable collection of works of art and artefacts of archaeological interest in Italy. In it are exposed over three thousand items in various exemplary thematic sections and stored hundreds of thousands of artefacts dating from prehistory to late antiquity, both from various ancient sites of the South, is the acquisition of important antiquarian collections, starting from the Farnese collection belonged to the royal dynasty of the Bourbons, the founders of the Museum.

The works of art and archaeological finds are presented according to their physical location within twenty-six thematic sections, formed by two originating criteria set out: antiquarian and typological. The first is centered around the core of the Farnese collection inherited by King Charles III and then held by the Bourbon family, to which were added over time, etc..., such collections Borgia, Picchianti, Santangelo and Vivenzio. The second is composed mainly by objects found in excavations in the cities buried by Vesuvius and the sites of ancient Greece and Magna. Recently it is conducting a reorganization of some sections, according to historical and topographical. There are also an important collection of Egyptian objects or Egyptianising, and a big medal with coins, medals and engraved gems, from the Greek era to modern times." ... more

"The Russian Museum is the first state museum of the Russian fine art in the country. It was established in 1895 in St Petersburg under the decree of the Emperor Nicholas II. Grand opened for visitors on March 19 (March 7, the Old Style) 1898.

The Russian Museum today is a unique depository of artistic treasures, a leading restoration center, an authoritative institute of academic research, a major educational center and the nucleus of a network of national museums of art.

The Russian Museum collection contains circa 400.000 exhibits. The main complex of museum buildings - the Mikhailovsky Palace and Benois Wing - houses the permanent exhibition of the Russian Museum, tracing the entire history of Russian art from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. The museum collection embraces all forms, genres, schools and movements of art.

The Russian Museum holds many exhibitions both in Russia and abroad. The Museum holds more than 50 temporary exhibitions and organizes more than 10 in other cities and abroad annually. Catalogues, albums and booklets made by museum researchers accompany many exhibitions.

Over the past twenty years, the museum complex has grown to include the Stroganov Palace, St Michael's (Engineers) Castle and the Marble Palace. The complex also includes the Mikhailovsky Gardens, Engineering Gardens, Summer Garden (including the Summer Palace) and the House of Peter the Great." ... more

"The collection of the State Hermitage includes more than three million works of art and artefacts of the world culture. Among them are paintings, graphic works, sculptures and works of applied art, archaeological finds and numismatic material.

The main architectural ensemble of the Hermitage situated in the centre of St Petersburg consists of the Winter Palace, the former state residence of the Russian emperors, the buildings of the Small, Old (Great) and New Hermitages, the Hermitage Theatre and the Auxiliary House.

The museum complex also includes the Menshikov Palace and the Eastern Wing of the General Staff building, the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre and the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory." ... more

"The Schlumpf Collection is certainly the most prestigious car collection in the world. This is demonstrated by the two Bugatti Royales, including the famous Coupé Napoléon, the 150 Bugatti, Hispano-Suiza, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Maserati, Maybach, Mercedes models, etc. It was in a former Mulhouse woollen mill, with its typically 19th century architecture, that Fritz Schlumpf established his fabulous collection of 437 cars belonging to 97 different brands. With this unique collection, the Cité de l’Automobile sees itself as being to cars what the Louvre is to art." ... more