Musing on Museums

May 18th is the International Museums Day.

It is a day created to raise awareness on how important museums are in the development of the society.

Museums have been around since 3^rd century BC, and the first ever one was at the University of Alexandria. Then came the European custom of family owned museum which would be open to public for a fee. Quite recently museums have become more public and the entrance fee is nominal.

Defined as buildings where historic arts, artefacts, works, sculptures, objects of cultural or biological interests are stored and preserve, studied and shown to students and general public museums  document how humanity has survived environment.

Museums can be classified as:

• Historic
• Natural
• Art
• Science
• Zoological
• Open air
• Music museum
• Mobile museum.

Fundamentally museum allows storages of the past. The learning here is visual, and with a good guide it is quite educative. It promotes cultural understanding and bonding.

The person who puts the museum together is called a curator. And the science of administration and management of museum is called Museumology.

This is a less glamorous profession but has tremendous opening. With a masters in Museology the career options are to becoming a museum director, curator, archivist, conservative specialist, exhibit designer and educationist.

The National Museum institute of History,  Art conservation and museology,  university of Calcutta, Benaras Hindu University , Baroda University and the Virkam University at Ujjain are the institutes that offer this program.

“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence