Museum
Types

There is no definitive standard as to the set types of museums. Additionally, the museum landscape has become so varied, that it may not be sufficient to use traditional categories to comprehend fully the vast variety existing throughout the world. However, it may be useful to categorize museums in different ways under multiple perspectives. Museums can vary based on size, from large institutions, to very small institutions focusing on specific subjects, such as a specific location, a notable person, or a given period of time. Museums also can be based on the main source of funding: central or federal government, provinces, regions, universities; towns and communities; other subsidised; nonsubsidised and private.

It may sometimes be useful to distinguish between diachronic museums which interpret the way its subject matter has developed and evolved through time (e.g., Lower East Side Tenement Museum and Diachronic Museum of Larissa), and synchronic museums which interpret the way its subject matter existed at a certain point in time (e.g., the Anne Frank House and Colonial Williamsburg). According to University of Florida Professor Eric Kilgerman, "While a museum in which a particular narrative unfolds within its halls is diachronic, those museums that limit their space to a single experience are called synchronic."

In her book Civilizing the Museum, author Elaine Heumann Gurian proposes that there are five categories of museums based on intention and not content: object centered, narrative, client centered, community centered, and national.

Museums can also be categorized into major groups by the type of collections they display, to include: fine arts, applied arts, craft, archaeology, anthropology and ethnology, biography, history, cultural history, science, technology, children's museums, natural history, botanical and zoological gardens. Within these categories, many museums specialize further, e.g., museums of modern art, folk art, local history, military history, aviation history, philately, agriculture, or geology. The size of a museum's collection typically determines the museum's size, whereas its collection reflects the type of museum it is. Many museums normally display a "permanent collection" of important selected objects in its area of specialization, and may periodically display "special collections" on a temporary basis.
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