index

I abide in a goodly Museum,

Frequented by sages profound:

‘Tis a kind of strange mausoleum,

Where the beasts that have vanished abound.

There’s a bird of the ages Triassic,

With his antideluvian beak,

And many a creature Jurassic,

And many a monster antique

May Kendall

Find a Museum

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We have many more museums to add, please bear with us, because each site has to be checked out by a human, to make sure that it is suitable and safe. We don’t use robots to find sites it is done completely by human beings, and they can be slow! For example our search to produce a listing for New Zealand, involved visiting over 2000 sites!

There are many tens of thousands of museums in the world, not all of them have a web site, where this is the case we have tried to provide links to the best sources of information. In our listings are many thousands of museums round the world.

Please remember that ideas of what consitutes a museum are extremely varied. Some of these museums are grand affairs run by countries or with huge corporate backing, and others are run by a small team of local enthusiasts and paid for out of their own pockets. Many of these smaller museums are absolute gems, and are a living tribute to those who created and care for them.

We apologise for issues in some areas of the site, but a major upgrade is in progress, involving some 5-10,000 person hours work. The major re-working of the site has been necessitated as a result of server issues. We are trying to resolve these as rapidly as possible, but as our team is voluntary we don’t want to pressurise them too much! During the updates we will be adding some 10-12,000 museums to our listing, in the last week alone we added 550!

Thousands of otherwise excellent museums have had to be excluded for one reason or another, primarily because no website could be identified, websites where they existed had extremely poor functionality, and yet others were not suitable for a family audience. Listings by major international agencies, and by governments and local authorities have been found to be inaccurate, either because links are outdated or museums have closed, in both of these situations this can be several years since this occurred (the record so far is 9 years)! In one case a museum had burned down and was not to be re-built and yet details remained on the local authority’s website, and yet another had been closed for 8 years due to lack of funding ! Yet others are excluded simply because parent bodies (including state departments) make very little attempt to communicate what the visitor needs to know, e.g. where the museum is located!

Something else that we find disappointing is that some museums never update their information! Five years between updates is not unusual it seems. This is a pity, because a good museum is a living thing, over time things change and events occur. During the last year, the webmaster has re-visited a number of museums, after a gap of only a year or so, and what changes! Museums that don’t show the latest events and news make most people think the museum must be boring too. A simple news page, or an RSS feed would be a great addition to many websites. In fact with this latest update we are going to re-introduce our own newsfeed.

Museum Thoughts

In the present world financial situation, many of our museums are being forced to close, or at least to restrict their work. Howabout if every time we visit a museum we give a small donation, even if they don’t suggest it. It doesn’t have to be large, even if we just give the loose change we are carrying it could make a huge difference to them.

If you are someone who works with children or young people, howabout making a visit to a museum as part of your activities? Please be careful with the planning, remember that most museums have educational material specifically for this kind of activity. Planning must include educating children about museums and what is expected of them. (My apologies to the Imperial War Museum London for my cub pack when they climbed all over one of your tanks!)

Another idea, what about encouraging them by putting a note in their guestbook if they have one, or speaking to the staff and volunteers. If they have a blog please add your comments. Also recommend them to your friends.

For the benefit of people with limited mobility, we are adding the mobility symbol, shown left, where appropriate. Please note that the symbol indicates that either all of a venue, or a significant part of it is wheelchair accessible. Absence of the symbol does not mean that a particular venue is inaccessible, simply that we don’t have enough information available at present.

Whilst all due care has been taken to verify information contained on this site, the International Museum Index accepts no responsibility for any errors, omissions or misrepresentation, the International Museum Index cannot be held responsible for the content etc. of linked sites.

Please remember that many of the maps only give approximate locations, as they may have been derived from limited information!