Museums hold large collections of items relating to their subject, building some of the largest complexes in the world in order to store and exhibit the collection in a controlled environment. The world's most preeminent museums have also engaged in various expansion projects through the years, expanding their total exhibition space. [1]
The following is a list of museums ranked according to their floor area where published by reliable sources. Only museums with more than 20,000 square meters (220,000 sq ft) of floor space are included. Entries are not ranked as large museums that do not have reliably-sourced statistics may be omitted; this is not necessarily a complete list.
The Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, is a national art museum in Paris, France. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French Kings.
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned with visual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry, performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections.
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, it was established in 1967 by the Australian Government as a national public art museum. As of 2022 it is under the directorship of Nick Mitzevich.
Donald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism. In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy. He is generally considered the leading international exponent of "minimalism", and its most important theoretician through such writings as "Specific Objects" (1964). Judd voiced his unorthodox perception of minimalism in Arts Yearbook 8, where he says, "The new three dimensional work doesn't constitute a movement, school, or style. The common aspects are too general and too little common to define a movement. The differences are greater than the similarities."
Vija Celmins is a Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and drawings of natural environments and phenomena such as the ocean, spider webs, star fields, and rocks. Her earlier work included pop sculptures and monochromatic representational paintings. Based in New York City, she has been the subject of over forty solo exhibitions since 1965, and major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Siavash "Siah" Armajani was an Iranian-born American sculptor and architect known for his public art.
Andreas Gursky is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United States. Its permanent collection spans about 20,000 years and represents the world's diverse cultures across six continents. The museum has seven curatorial areas: Arts of Africa & the Americas; Contemporary Art; Decorative Arts, Textiles & Sculpture; Asian Art; Paintings; Photography and New Media; and Prints and Drawings.
Gwendolyn Clarine Knight was an American artist who was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in the West Indies.
Candida Höfer is a German photographer. She is a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. From 1997 to 2000, she taught as professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe. Höfer is the recipient of the 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Photography award, as part of the Sony World Photography awards. She is based in Cologne.
Mary Frank is an English visual artist who works as a sculptor, painter, printmaker, draftswoman, and illustrator.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is an art museum located on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It runs under an agreement between the UAE and France, signed in March 2007, that allows it to use the Louvre's name until 2037, and has been described by the Louvre as "France's largest cultural project abroad." It is approximately 24,000 square metres (260,000 sq ft) in size, with 8,000 square metres (86,000 sq ft) of galleries, making it the largest art museum in the Arabian peninsula. Artworks from around the world are showcased at the museum, with stated intent to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western art.
Qatar Museums is a Qatari government entity that oversees the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, MIA Park, QM Gallery at the Katara Cultural Village, ALRIWAQ DOHA Exhibition Space, the Al Zubarah World Heritage Site Visitor Centre, and archaeological projects throughout Qatar, as well as the development of future projects and museums that will highlight its collections across multiple areas of activity including Orientalist art, photography, sports, children's education, and wildlife conservation.
The year 2012 in art involves some significant events.
Michal Rovner, also known as Michal Rovner Hammer, is an Israeli contemporary artist, she is known for her video, photo, and cinema artwork. Rovner is internationally known with exhibitions at major museums, including the Louvre (2011) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2002).
M+ is an art museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong. It exhibits twentieth and twenty-first century art encompassing visual art, design and architecture, and moving image. It opened on 12 November 2021.
Souls Grown Deep Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and promoting the work of leading contemporary African American artists from the Southeastern United States. Its mission is to include their contributions in the canon of American art history through acquisitions from its collection by major museums, as well as through exhibitions, programs, and publications. The foundation derives its name from a 1921 poem by Langston Hughes (1902–1967) titled "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," the last line of which is "My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Mary Lee Bendolph is an American quilt maker of the Gee's Bend Collective from Gee's Bend (Boykin), Alabama. Her work has been influential on subsequent quilters and artists and her quilts have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the country. Bendolph uses fabric from used clothing for quilting in appreciation of the "love and spirit" with old cloth. Bendolph has spent her life in Gee's Bend and has had work featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota.
Bertrand Lavier is a French conceptual artist, painter and sculptor, belonging to the post-readymade era, inspired by the Duchampian legacy and the Nouveau réalisme, the artistic movement created by the art critic Pierre Restany in 1960. Lavier studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Horticulture in Versailles, France in 1968-1971.
LE PALAIS 360,000 M2 de planchers... LE DOMAINE DU LOUVRE ET DES TUILERIES 37 hectares de cours et de jardins... COUR NAPOLÉON 28,000 M2 de surface
Spread over 32,000 square meters of gallery space, admission is completely free, and it's well worth paying a visit.
In 2001, the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London opened renovations to their British Galleries, which cover over 32,000 square feet of exhibition space and comprise 10% of the Museum's overall exhibition floor.
In addition to overseeing the hundreds of Gallery staff who care for the 1.3 million square feet of space, including the iconic, architecturally significant buildings and landscapes...
In total, the NGA has 271,000 square feet of exhibition space.
