Art Museum 101

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After you’ve read through this list, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect at a museum. You’ll know what questions to ask, and your first impression will be much more enjoyable. You’ll also find out how to get the most out of a visit: where to go, what to see, and how to get there.

You can start with Art Museum 101: A step-by-step guide to the basics of art museums or browse the list below.

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Art museums can be intimidating places. This introduction to the basics of art museums is intended to make them less intimidating, and more fun!

Art museums are wonderful! Unless you’re an art expert, many works of art may seem mysterious or perplexing. But in fact, all the different kinds of art have essentially the same purpose: to capture emotion. The emotional effect is often the same for similar pieces, even if the details vary widely.

You can learn a lot about any piece of art by understanding its emotional effect: what it makes you feel like, what it makes you think about, what you imagine when you look at it. In this sense, every work of art is a kind of metaphor.

There are six major kinds of emotional effects that we will discuss here: The first three are closely related to each other; each one is a variation on the next one. The next two may seem opposites, but they are closely related as well.

The most important thing to realize about art museums is that they’re not all the same. If you go to a museum with a bunch of masterpieces, like the Louvre or the Uffizi, it’s very different from walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art and finding yourself in front of a bunch of statues of people with really big heads—statues that look like someone cut off their noses and stuck on little caps.

Even if you’ve never been in an art museum before, you can probably tell which kind of museum you’re looking at just by looking around. The one with statues of people with really big heads is probably a history museum; they’ll have timelines, and maps, and glass cases full of old documents. The one with the giant pyramid-shaped structure is probably an archeology museum. And so on.

But if you walk into a modern art museum—like the Tate Modern in London or the Guggenheim in New York—you might feel a little lost. What do you even do there?

Well, this post is here to help! It is sort of like an introduction to visiting art museums—a beginners guide, if you will. So read on!

Art museums are full of things that look like they’re from outer space: brightly colored, abstract, and completely baffling.

The idea behind this museum guide is to help demystify those objects on display. It will help you figure out what you’re looking at, and whether it’s worth your time. It will also hopefully get you to look at art in new ways.

Art museums are strange places. If you’ve never been to one before, you might be confused by the strange juxtaposition of art and commerce and class privilege. Or maybe you just want to know the story behind that painting you like so much. This guide will help.

What is a museum?

Art museums are collections of artworks, usually owned by a society or organization, and preserved for public viewing. The most famous type of museum is an art museum, which is where paintings and sculptures go. But there are also natural history museums (where animals and plants go), medical museums (human anatomy), car museums (cars go), train museums (trains go), and other kinds of museums for cars or trains or whatever else goes.

How did museums begin?

The word “museum” comes from the Greek mouseion, meaning “temple of the muses,” or more specifically the great Temple of Apollo in ancient Greece where scholars would meet to discuss ideas and share knowledge. This was the original “museum.” As far as we know, it did not have any paintings on its walls.

These days, most people agree that this kind of sharing is best done in a building that is not called a temple, though some still call their local art

If you have been to dozens of art museums, you may find this a bit simplistic. But if you are new to art museums or to visiting museums in general, what I hope this guide will do is help you avoid some of the more common mistakes visitors make.

However, keep in mind that the purpose of an art museum is not simply to look at art. The experience of being in an art museum may be more important than the specific works on display at any given time. Most museums offer a variety of activities and events that can help you get more out of your visit. If there is something special going on while you’re there, check out their website before you go, or ask a staff member when you arrive.

Seating is often limited. Most museums encourage visitors to stand and contemplate a work rather than sit and read about it in the catalogue or on their smartphone; but if the benches are full, or if you prefer to sit, try not to block traffic or block the view for others by sitting too close to the piece.

Museums are typically quiet places. Some have “quiet” areas where cell phones are prohibited; take advantage of those opportunities when they arise. And please remember that although it may seem like no one else is listening,

When you want to look at art, the first thing you should do is find out which museum or galleries have the works you want to see. That’s the best way of getting a sense of how they fit into a larger context; most museums will have copies of the same catalogs, and it’s rare that one institution will have everything by an artist.

What you should do first is pick an artist you like, and then start with his or her Wikipedia page. If there are a lot of museums with works by that artist, it’s good to look at a list of those museums in chronological order—starting with the oldest (or, if there’s more than one museum dedicated to that artist and his or her work, starting with the institution founded first). A chronologically ordered list isn’t completely reliable as far as which museum has what; sometimes a painting will be sold and end up in another collection. But it gives you a sense of how an artist’s work was understood over time.

What else do I need to know about visiting a museum? You should know the difference between permanent collections (which can be seen whenever the museum is open) and special exhibits (which are only up for a limited time). You should learn what kind of information plaques on

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