Museums and Museums of Curiosities

A museum is an institution that stores and protects artifacts of significant scientific, artistic, or historical value. Typically, museums have permanent or temporary exhibits that are open to the public. Large, well-known museums can be found in cities all over the world, while smaller museums can be found in smaller cities and towns.

Museums have a long history, including the famous Alexandria Museum, built in Ptolemaic Egypt. In the West, museums began as private collections of art by very wealthy individuals, families, and institutions. However, with the advancement of technology, the digitization of information and the ability to store digital information has transformed museum exhibits into high-resolution virtual exhibits that can be accessed online.

The forerunner of the modern museum collection was the cabinet of curiosities or "wunderkammer" (room of wonders), privately collected by wealthy collectors. Curiosity cabinets first appeared in the 16th century and survived into the 19th century. The "cabinet of curiosities" was a collection of oddities that could not be considered in modern classifications. The objects collected include physical fragments of natural history, archaeological artifacts, cabinet paintings, and antiques.

Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria had a "cabinet of curiosities" that consisted mainly of paintings depicting deformed people. This collection can still be seen today in the "Room of Art and Curiosities" at Ambras Castle in Austria. Unusual items such as seashells, stuffed mammals, old maps, triple picture frames, and ancient objects were also collected and stored in the various curiosity cabinets.

It was not until the Age of Enlightenment that museums as bastions of public culture came into existence. The Vatican City in Rome was the first to open two public museums, the Capitol Museum and the Vatican Museums. Museums for the purpose of collecting and exhibiting works of art became an indispensable facility in major cities. The museums store and protect paintings, illustrations, sculptures, drawings, metalwork, furniture, sister frames, and new media art.

The Ashmolean Museum of Art in Oxford, opened on May 24, 1683, is the world's first university art museum. the Ashmolean Museum of Art in Oxford, opened on May 24, 1683, was built as a museum of curiosities for the statesman Elias Ashmole. Ashmole was an antiquities dealer who collected curiosities such as three picture frames, curious works of art, and geological fragments.