Making Egypt’s Museums

The world’s largest archaeological museum is poised to open on the Giza Plateau, building on two centuries of museum planning and development.
Family Portrait by Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl

The Nashville Museum of Natural and Artificial Curiosities

Inspired by Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, artist and collector Ralph E. W. Earl founded a similar institution in Tennessee in 1818.
The New India Museum, Whitehall-Yard. Illustration for The Illustrated London News, 3 August 1861.

Imperial Science and the Company’s Museum

The East India Company’s London museum stored the stuff of empire, feeding the growth of new collections-based disciplines and scientific societies.
The Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in St. Augustine, FL

Should Museums Display Shrunken Heads?

Tsantsas, or shrunken human heads, remind us of how museums have often been founded on a violent trade in indigenous culture.
An assistant curator at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall inspects a rare painting that is currently being kept at the museum store and warehouse

How Museums Tidy Up

Deaccessioning old works can be a complicated and fraught process. But even museums have to spring-clean now and then.
Fire Blazes At Iconic National Museum of Brazil

Brazil’s Museu Nacional Was More Than Just a Museum

Brazil's oldest natural history museum has burned down. The institution played a crucial part in creating Brazil's identity as a country.
Ectoplasm Helen Duncan

Ectoplasm and the Last British Woman Tried for Witchcraft

Spiritualist medium Helen Duncan was photographed emitting ectoplasm, supposedly proof of her ability to contact the dead.
Paleontologist dinosaur bones

The Controversy Around the First Museum Dinosaurs

Dinosaur bones on display at the American Museum of Natural History always balanced conveying objective truth with promoting science to the public.
Nelson, New Zealand - March 05, 2012. Close-Up of Iconic Papa & Rangi Sculpture at Arts Unique, next to the enterance to the Abel Tasman National Park, Marahau, Tasman Region, New Zealand.

Reversing the Trade of Māori Tattooed Heads

Preserved heads decorated with tā moko, or facial tattoos, were sacred objects to New Zealand's Māori. Then Europeans started collecting them.
Beyonce Jay Z

What About the Art in “Apesh*t”?

Beyoncé and Jay-Z's new music video was filmed entirely at the Louvre museum. What messages hide in the histories of the featured artworks?