97 Fun Facts About Museum

The word 'museum' comes from a Greek term for a shrine dedicated to whom?

The Muses, goddesses of the arts, were honoured at a mouseion; the famous one in Alexandria was an institute where scholars lived and studied, not a place for showing works of art.

Around 530 BC, the Babylonian princess Ennigaldi kept what is often called the first museum in which modern country?

Iraq is home to Ur, where Leonard Woolley dug up her collection in the 1920s: objects centuries apart in age lay together with clay labels in three languages, which is why he called it a museum.

Which Oxford institution, opened in 1683, is Britain's first public museum?

The Ashmolean opened in 1683 to house Elias Ashmole's cabinet of curiosities, itself largely gathered by the gardener-collectors John Tradescant, father and son.

The British Museum, established in 1753, was founded on the collections of which physician?

Sir Hans Sloane left his 71,000 objects to the nation on condition that Parliament pay his heirs £20,000, far below their worth; a public lottery raised the money.

Which British Museum object did British forces take from the French in Egypt in 1801?

The Rosetta Stone was handed over under the 1801 Capitulation of Alexandria; because it repeats one decree in hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek, it let Champollion crack the hieroglyphs in the 1820s.

The Louvre first opened as a museum during which period?

The French Revolution turned the former royal palace into a public museum: it opened on 10 August 1793, a year to the day after the monarchy fell, to show the nation the royal art collections.

Which architect designed the glass pyramid that became the Louvre's main entrance?

I. M. Pei was appointed in 1983 under President Mitterrand's Grand Louvre plan; critics called his glass pyramid an outrage before it opened in 1989, yet it became the symbol of the museum.

Which painter was questioned over the Mona Lisa's 1911 theft from the Louvre?

Pablo Picasso was brought in for questioning and cleared; the real thief, former Louvre worker Vincenzo Peruggia, kept the painting for more than two years before he was caught in Florence in 1913.

Which French king, Leonardo da Vinci's last patron, acquired the Mona Lisa?

Francis I invited Leonardo to France in 1516 and acquired the portrait the artist brought with him; that is why Italy's most famous painting belongs to France.

The Louvre began as a medieval fortress guarding Paris against attack from Normandy, then held by which kingdom?

England's kings still held Normandy, so Philip II put the fortress at the western end of his new wall around Paris, the side most exposed to an attack from there.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's main building sits on which New York thoroughfare?

Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street has been the Met's home since 1880, when it moved to the edge of Central Park after eight years in temporary quarters farther downtown; its first show opened in 1872.

What is the popular centerpiece of the Metropolitan Museum's Egyptian Art department?

The Temple of Dendur was Egypt's gift to the United States in 1965, in thanks for help saving Nubia's monuments from the waters of the Aswan High Dam; the Met has shown it in a glass-walled wing since 1978.

Which British scientist, who never visited America, left his fortune to the United States to found a national institution?

James Smithson's will sent his fortune to America only if his nephew died childless, which happened in 1835; Congress then argued for a decade before creating the Smithsonian in 1846.

Which Smithsonian museum houses the Hope Diamond?

National Museum of Natural History staff received the 45.52-carat blue diamond in 1958 through the post: jeweller Harry Winston sent it by registered mail in a box wrapped in brown paper.

Florence's Uffizi takes its name from the Italian word for what?

Offices is what 'uffizi' means: Vasari began the building in 1560 to bring the magistrates and public offices of Cosimo I de' Medici's Florence under one roof.

Which Madrid museum holds Goya's 'Black Paintings'?

The Prado holds all fourteen: Goya painted them straight onto the walls of his house, and decades after his death a later owner had them transferred to canvas.

Which empress founded the Hermitage Museum in 1764?

Catherine the Great began the Hermitage in 1764 to house her private art collection; the public was not admitted until 1852, under Tsar Nicholas I.

The Hermitage's main complex includes which former imperial residence?

The Winter Palace was the tsars' official residence until 1917, when Red Guards took it from the Provisional Government in the October Revolution; today it is the main building of the museum.

Which architect designed the Rijksmuseum's main building, opened in Amsterdam in 1885?

Pierre Cuypers, who also designed Amsterdam's Centraal Station, gave the 1885 Rijksmuseum its Gothic-Renaissance brick facade; the galleries show about 8,000 objects from a collection of a million.

Dalí's The Persistence of Memory hangs in which New York museum?

MoMA has held it since 1934, when an anonymous donor gave the canvas three years after Dalí painted it; it measures only about 24 by 33 centimetres.

Which architect designed New York's spiral Guggenheim Museum, completed in 1959?

Frank Lloyd Wright took the commission in 1943 and died six months before the museum opened in October 1959; even avant-garde artists complained that his building would compete with the art inside.

The Vatican Museums trace their origin to which ancient sculpture, unearthed in a Roman vineyard in 1506?

Laocoön and His Sons came out of the ground on the Esquiline Hill in 1506; Michelangelo was among the first called to see it, and Pope Julius II bought it at once for his statue court.

Which room comes last on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums?

The Sistine Chapel closes the route, yet it is still a working chapel: under Michelangelo's ceiling the cardinals gather for the conclave that elects each new pope.

Which Paris museum occupies a former railway station?

The Musée d'Orsay fills the Gare d'Orsay, which lost its long-distance trains by 1939 and was due to be torn down for a hotel until the culture minister stepped in; it reopened as a museum in 1986.

Which London gallery fills the former Bankside Power Station?

Tate Modern kept the station's vast Turbine Hall as its entrance: the machinery was stripped out, and the hall now hosts giant commissions, the first by Louise Bourgeois in 2000.

Which skeleton replaced Dippy the Diplodocus at London's Natural History Museum in 2017?

A blue whale has hung there since 2017, chosen to stand for its species' recovery after decades of commercial hunting; Dippy, a plaster cast shown since 1905, went on a tour of Britain.

New York's natural history museum on Central Park West stands in a park named after which president?

Theodore Roosevelt Park was plain Manhattan Square until 1958, when the city renamed it for the president; his bronze statue stood at the museum's entrance from 1940 until it was removed in 2022.

What disguise got two thieves into Boston's Gardner Museum for the 1990 art heist?

Police officers' uniforms got them buzzed in after they claimed to be answering a disturbance; they handcuffed the guards and took 13 works, and the museum still hangs the empty frames.

The Concert, stolen from Boston's Gardner Museum in 1990, was painted by which Dutch master?

Johannes Vermeer has only about 35 paintings to his name, so losing one is a rare blow; the thieves lifted it out of its frame the night they cut two Rembrandts from theirs.

Sue the T. rex is the star of which Chicago museum?

The Field Museum won Sue at a 1997 auction for about $8.4 million, then a record for a fossil, with help from McDonald's and Disney, after a five-year custody fight over the bones.

Which architect designed the Louvre Abu Dhabi and its vast perforated dome?

Jean Nouvel called the dome 'a major symbol of Arab architecture' and gave his a modern twist: a pierced metal canopy that lets sunlight filter down, so the galleries sit in shifting light and shade.

Where was the Museum of Bad Art's first painting found?

In the trash: antique dealer Scott Wilson spotted 'Lucy in the Field with Flowers' on a Boston curb in 1993 and meant to keep only the frame, until a friend asked for the painting too.

In Night at the Museum, where does Ben Stiller's Larry Daley take a night-watchman job?

New York's natural history collection is the real American Museum of Natural History, where holiday attendance jumped about 20 percent after the 2006 film opened; the museum credited part of the rise to it.

Which city's Vasa Museum is built around a warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628?

Stockholm watched the Vasa go down barely 1,300 metres into her first sail; she lay on the harbour floor for 333 years until she was raised, almost intact, in 1961.

Frank Gehry's titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum opened in 1997 in which Spanish city?

King Juan Carlos I opened it on the banks of the Nervión on 18 October 1997; the urban regeneration it sparked gave rise to the term 'Bilbao effect'.

Which Van Gogh painting hangs at the Getty Center in Los Angeles?

Irises was one of the first pictures Van Gogh painted after he committed himself to the asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1889; the Getty has owned it since 1990.

Which temple's size and alignment does the Acropolis Museum's top gallery match?

The Parthenon's frieze runs round the gallery in its original order, with plaster copies marking the pieces kept in London; Greek officials hoped the new museum would help win them back.

Which Berlin museum takes its name from a monumental ancient Greek altar rebuilt inside it?

The Pergamon Museum was built between 1910 and 1930 around the Pergamon Altar, excavated in what is now Turkey; it closed completely in 2023 for a renovation due to keep parts shut until about 2037.

The Grand Egyptian Museum stands beside which landmark?

The Giza Pyramids are about two kilometres away; in the atrium stands an 11-metre statue of Ramesses II, moved in 2006 from a central Cairo square where traffic fumes were damaging the granite.

The Museum of Broken Relationships was founded in which Croatian city?

Zagreb artists Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić joked about a museum for the leftovers of their own breakup, then asked friends to donate theirs; the touring show settled in the city's Upper Town in 2010.

Which headless statue tops the Louvre's Daru staircase?

The Winged Victory of Samothrace was found broken into fragments on a Greek island in 1863, and neither head nor arms ever turned up; a second dig in 1879 recovered the ship's prow the goddess alights on.

Which Paris museum occupies the Hôtel Biron, where its namesake artist rented a studio from 1908?

The Musée Rodin opened in 1919 in the Hôtel Biron, the 18th-century mansion where Rodin rented rooms from 1908; he donated his works to the state on condition the house became his museum.

Which early Van Gogh hangs in Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum?

The Potato Eaters, painted in the Netherlands in 1885, shows a farm family at supper by lamplight; Van Gogh gave them coarse faces and bony hands on purpose, to show they had dug the food themselves and honestly earned it.

London's V&A is a museum devoted to what?

Applied and decorative arts and design are its subject: after the Great Exhibition of 1851, Prince Albert urged that its profits pay for museums to educate designers and manufacturers.

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo occupies a 1901 building in which location?

Tahrir Square has housed the museum since 1902, in a building by French architect Marcel Dourgnon; its first home at Bulaq was damaged by a Nile flood in 1878, and a palace in Giza served in between.

In which city was the Rijksmuseum founded in 1798, before moving to Amsterdam?

The Hague's Huis ten Bosch palace housed the first national gallery, opened in 1800; Napoleon's brother Louis, made King of Holland, moved the collection to his new capital, Amsterdam, in 1808.

Which Dutch queen reopened the Rijksmuseum in April 2013, weeks before she abdicated?

Queen Beatrix reopened the museum on 13 April 2013 after a ten-year rebuild, then gave up the throne on 30 April to her son Willem-Alexander.

Which animals have lived in the cellars of Russia's Hermitage Museum since an 18th-century empress ordered them in?

Cats were ordered into the building in 1745 by Empress Elizabeth to keep down the mice, and today the museum has a press secretary dedicated to them.

The 72 steps that Rocky Balboa runs up in the 1976 film Rocky lead to which city's art museum?

Philadelphia Museum of Art visitors still race up the steps to copy the boxer, and a bronze statue of him, commissioned by Sylvester Stallone for Rocky III, greets them.

Which comedian plays the wax figure of the 26th US president in all three live-action Night at the Museum films?

Robin Williams gave one of his final performances in the 2014 sequel Secret of the Tomb, and the film is dedicated to his memory.

The Benin Bronzes, seized by British forces in 1897 and now held by museums worldwide, came from which modern country?

Nigeria is home to Benin City, capital of the old Kingdom of Benin; the modern Republic of Benin next door is a different place entirely.

The Tate galleries are named after Henry Tate, a Victorian merchant who made his fortune refining which commodity?

Sugar made Henry Tate rich after he bought the patent for making sugar cubes in 1872, and his firm later became Tate & Lyle.

Which Istanbul landmark was run as a museum from 1935 until a court ruling changed its status in 2020?

Hagia Sophia spent centuries as a church and then a mosque before the secular Turkish republic opened it as a museum, and in 2020 it was redesignated a mosque.

Which 17th-century warship, salvaged in 1961 after sinking on its maiden voyage, fills its own museum in Stockholm?

Vasa sailed barely 1,300 metres before sinking in 1628, then spent 333 years on the seabed with her hull largely intact.

Which Egyptian queen's painted bust, found in a sculptor's workshop in 1912, is the star of Berlin's Neues Museum?

Nefertiti's bust was unearthed at Amarna by a German team under Ludwig Borchardt, whom Egypt accuses of wrapping it up to hide its value and get it out of the country.

In Night at the Museum, what kind of animal is Dexter, the stuffed exhibit that steals Larry Daley's keys?

Capuchin monkey Dexter was played by an animal actor called Crystal, whose trainers spent weeks teaching her to slap and bite Ben Stiller on cue.

Which Michelangelo statue was moved indoors to Florence's Galleria dell'Accademia in 1873 to protect it from damage?

David stood outdoors in the Piazza della Signoria for more than three centuries, and a replica has filled its old spot on the square since 1910.

Which actor plays the miniature cowboy Jedediah in Night at the Museum without a credit in the first film?

Owen Wilson went uncredited as the tiny cowboy in 2006 but returned with star billing for both live-action sequels.

In Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which president's giant marble statue walks out of its memorial?

Abraham Lincoln's huge figure joins the fight and scares off an army of warriors, in a sequence partly shot at the real monument on a May night in 2008.

In Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Amy Adams plays a wax model of which pioneering aviator?

Amelia Earhart becomes Larry Daley's love interest in the sequel, and critics singled out Adams's performance for praise.

Which Van Gogh canvas, showing the view from his asylum window in 1889, hangs in New York's Museum of Modern Art?

The Starry Night shows the sky just before sunrise, but the village beneath the swirls is imaginary, added from sketches.

Which wax museum chain was founded in 1835 by a French sculptor who had modelled victims of the Revolution?

Madame Tussauds is named after Marie Tussaud, who brought her death masks and wax busts to Britain and made the Chamber of Horrors an early star attraction.

Which Rembrandt group portrait, trimmed on all four sides in 1715, is the Rijksmuseum's best-known painting?

The Night Watch was cut down when it moved to Amsterdam's town hall, and in 2021 its lost edges were recreated by artificial intelligence from an old copy.

Beijing's Palace Museum fills which vast walled complex, home to China's emperors from the Ming dynasty onwards?

Forbidden City buildings served as the imperial palace until the Qing dynasty fell, and UNESCO lists them as the world's largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures.

Which Madrid museum has displayed Picasso's Guernica since the huge anti-war canvas left the Prado in 1992?

Museo Reina Sofía received the painting only after decades in New York, because Picasso wanted it kept out of Spain until liberty and democracy returned.

Which title do American museums give to the trained guides who lead visitors through their galleries?

Docent is a title rarely heard outside the United States, and English speakers elsewhere prefer guide, facilitator or educator.

Which Botticelli painting, showing a goddess standing in a giant scallop shell, hangs in the Uffizi in Florence?

The Birth of Venus shows the goddess newly born yet fully grown, and Botticelli picked out her hair and the shell in real gold.

Which screen veteran plays Cecil Fredericks, the retiring night guard who turns thief, in Night at the Museum?

Dick Van Dyke plays the villain alongside fellow veterans Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs, whose trio of retiring guards plan to rob the building and frame Larry Daley.

In Night at the Museum, Larry Daley tames the roaming Tyrannosaurus skeleton by throwing it what?

A bone is all it takes to win over the huge fossil, and Larry promptly gives his new friend the name Rexy.

Which Ohio city beat rival bidders in 1986 to become home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum?

Cleveland pledged $65 million in public money and argued that local disc jockey Alan Freed had coined the term rock and roll.

Which San Francisco science museum, founded by physicist Frank Oppenheimer in 1969, also started Pi Day?

Exploratorium staff held the first Pi Day in 1988, and its founder had worked on the Manhattan Project with his brother J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The Museum of Old and New Art, known as MONA and built largely underground, stands in which Australian state?

Tasmania's capital Hobart is home to the museum, which its founder has called a subversive adult Disneyland and most visitors reach by ferry up the River Derwent.

New York's Intrepid Museum is built aboard which type of warship, launched in 1943 and now a National Historic Landmark?

Aircraft carrier USS Intrepid was only the second in the United States to be converted into a museum, after USS Yorktown.

Which retired space shuttle reached the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center on the back of a Boeing 747 in 2012?

Discovery launched and landed 39 times over 27 years of service, flying more missions than any other orbiter in the fleet.

The Louvre was renamed in 1803 after which ruler, whose armies filled it with art seized across Europe?

Napoleon saw the museum take his name at the suggestion of its first director, but many of the looted works went back to their owners after he abdicated.

Which Paris landmark, completed in 1977, wears its pipes, ducts and escalators on the outside?

Centre Pompidou architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers were in their thirties and thought they had no chance, yet their inside-out design was chosen from 681 entries.

Mexico City's Frida Kahlo Museum, the painter's birthplace and family home, is better known by which nickname?

The Blue House, or La Casa Azul, is named for its cobalt-blue walls, and a ticket also covers the nearby Anahuacalli Museum set up by Diego Rivera.

Which actor plays Ahkmenrah, the mummified pharaoh who owns the magic tablet, in the Night at the Museum films?

Rami Malek plays a benevolent ruler who becomes fully human after dark, and Ben Kingsley joined the third film as his father.

Which director, later behind Deadpool & Wolverine, made all three live-action Night at the Museum films?

Shawn Levy counted the 2006 original as his highest-grossing film as a director until his superhero hit finally overtook it.

Which British comedian plays Octavius, the miniature Roman general, in the Night at the Museum films?

Steve Coogan's tiny general spends the first film's nights feuding with a miniature cowboy from a rival display, and the two return as best friends in both sequels.

In Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which actor plays the pharaoh Kahmunrah and voices two statues?

Hank Azaria plays the malevolent elder brother of the first film's mummy, and critics praised his turn as the villain.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection of modern art fills the heiress's former palazzo home in which Italian city?

Venice was the American heiress's home for three decades, and her 18th-century Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal now shows the art she collected.

Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum, displays the world's largest specimen of which rare deep-sea animal?

Colossal squid on show at Te Papa weighs 495 kilograms, and the museum's Māori name means the treasure box.

Which British ambassador to the Ottoman court removed the Parthenon sculptures now held by the British Museum?

Lord Elgin was cleared by a parliamentary committee of acquiring the marbles illegally, and during the Second World War they were hidden in a London Underground tunnel.

Which Anglo-Saxon ship burial in Suffolk yielded the masked helmet on permanent display at the British Museum?

Sutton Hoo landowner Edith Pretty was the legal owner of the treasure, yet within days she donated the entire find to the nation.

The Terracotta Army, found by farmers digging a well in 1974, is displayed in a museum outside which Chinese city?

Xi'an has dry air that is hard on the clay soldiers: once exposed, the lacquer under their paint can curl in fifteen seconds and flake off in four minutes.

The Met Gala raises money each year for which department of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art?

The Costume Institute relies on the ball to pay its operating expenses, and its galleries reopened in 2014 named after Vogue's Anna Wintour.

Night at the Museum is based on a 1993 children's picture book written and illustrated by which artist?

Milan Trenc wrote and drew the book for Barron's Educational Series and followed it with a sequel, Another Night at the Museum, in 2013.

Which Downton Abbey star plays the wax Sir Lancelot in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb?

Dan Stevens was cast as the Round Table knight in November 2013, in a sequel that sends the American exhibits to London's British Museum.

J. Paul Getty's Roman-style museum in Los Angeles was modelled on which country house buried by Vesuvius?

Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum inspired the design, which also borrows details from several other ancient sites.

Which Dutch museum, built from 1636 as a colonial governor's home, holds Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring?

Mauritshuis takes its name from John Maurice of Nassau, who had the house built while he was governor of Dutch Brazil.

The Lewis chessmen, shared between the British Museum and Edinburgh, are almost all carved from which material?

Walrus ivory was used for nearly every piece, with a few cut from whale teeth, and 82 of them are in London against just 11 in Scotland.

Which Paris museum displays eight of Monet's huge Water Lilies murals in two oval rooms he helped to design?

Musée de l'Orangerie arranges the panels, each two metres high, so that its two rooms together trace the infinity symbol.

The Anne Frank House, opened as a museum in 1960, stands beside which Amsterdam canal?

Prinsengracht 263 became the base of Otto Frank's spice and gelling companies when he moved the firms there in December 1940.

Salvador Dalí is buried in a crypt beneath the stage of the theatre-museum he created in which Catalan town?

Figueres was the painter's home town, and he spent his final years living in the museum itself, from 1984 until his death in 1989.

Which Southern port city claims the oldest museum in the United States, established in 1773?

Charleston founded its museum three years before the Declaration of Independence, while South Carolina was still a British colony.

Which branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows medieval European art in Upper Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park?

The Cloisters incorporates architectural elements from medieval abbeys in France and Catalonia, on a hilltop site chosen for its elevation and views.