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  • National Institute of Fine Arts (art institution, Mexico)
    ...throughout the country, including the street dramas and dances that accompany local fiestas. To encourage and help disseminate Mexican art in all its forms, the federal government sponsors the National Institute of Fine Arts. Under its auspices are the programs of the National Symphony Orchestra, the Ballet Folklorico, and the Modern and Classical Ballet, all of which perform nationally......
  • National Institute of Mental Health (United States agency)
    In 1946 the passage of the National Mental Health Act in the United States made possible the creation of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 1949 within what later became the Department of Health and Human Services. State hospital systems were reorganized with increased budgets, while significant federal funds were made available for research, training, and clinical facilities.......
  • National Institute of Standards and Technology (United States government)
    in Washington, D.C., an official source, with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; formerly the National Bureau of Standards), for standard time in the United States. The positional measurement of celestial objects for purposes of timekeeping and navigation has been the main work of the observatory since its beginning. In 1833 the first small observatory building was......
  • National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (American organization)
    ...from academic and scientific sources. Among major efforts in the United States to bring a scientific orientation to bear on the consideration of alcohol problems has been the founding of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 1970. The new trend has had its repercussions also on international cooperation. The International Bureau Against Alcoholism, founded in 1907,......
  • National Institutes of Health (United States agency)
    agency of the United States government that conducts and supports biomedical research into the causes, cure, and prevention of disease. The NIH is an agency of the Public Health Service of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the largest single supporter of biomedical research in the country and also provides training for health researchers and disseminates medical information....
  • National Insurance Act (United Kingdom [1911])
    ...Germany (1908), where he studied the Bismarckian scheme of insurance benefits, Lloyd George decided to introduce health and unemployment insurance on a similar basis in Britain. This he did in the National Insurance Act of 1911. The measure inspired bitter opposition and was even unpopular with the working class, who were not convinced by Lloyd George’s slogan “ninepence for......
  • National Insurance Fund (British government health and welfare)
    ...average earnings. Employers collect the contribution, and there is also an employer contribution. Separate arrangements exist for the self-employed. The revenue from contributions goes into the National Insurance Fund....
  • national intelligence
    Intelligence is conducted on three levels: strategic (sometimes called national), tactical, and counterintelligence. The broadest of these levels is strategic intelligence, which includes information about the capabilities and intentions of foreign countries. Tactical intelligence, sometimes called operational or combat intelligence, is information required by military field commanders. Because......
  • National Intelligence Estimate (United States government report)
    ...Iranian nuclear weapon led to speculation that Bush was contemplating military action against the country. In December 2007, however, the administration’s suspicions were contradicted by the National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus report of U.S. intelligence agencies, which declared with “high confidence” that in 2003 Iran had abandoned attempts to develop a nuclear......
  • National Intelligence Service (South Korean government agency)
    ...martial law in the 1980s. In 1994 legislative oversight of the agency was strengthened, and in the following year it moved to a new headquarters complex under new leadership. The agency, renamed the National Intelligence Service in 1999, collects and coordinates national security intelligence. The Defense Security Command of the Ministry of National Defense and the National Intelligence Service...
  • National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (American organization)
    ...renamed the Rodeo Cowboys Association (RCA) in 1945 and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) in 1975. Its rules became accepted by most rodeos. Amateur rodeo grew in popularity, and the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, formed in 1948, has 80 member schools. Some 500 secondary school, 4-H Club, Future Farmers of America, and other junior rodeos are held annually. The......
  • national interest (political science)
    Although there are many variations of realism, all of them make use of the core concepts of national interest and the struggle for power. According to realism, states exist within an anarchic international system in which they are ultimately dependent on their own capabilities, or power, to further their national interests. The most important national interest is the survival of the state,......
  • National Intergroup, Inc. (American company)
    American holding company established in 1983 to facilitate the diversification of National Steel Corporation. Formerly headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., NII moved to Dallas, Texas, in 1991, and National Steel moved to Mishawaka, Ind., in 1992....
  • national investment (economics)
    in economics, numerical coefficient showing the effect of a change in total national investment on the amount of total national income. It equals the ratio of the change in total income to the change in investment....
  • National Invitation Tournament
    collegiate basketball competition initiated in the United States in 1938 by New York City basketball writers and held annually since then in Madison Square Garden under the auspices of the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA). It is a single-elimination tournament (a loss brings elimination) with 32 of the nation’s outstanding college teams invited to participate....
  • National Iranian Oil Company (Iranian company)
    ...is unquestionably Iran’s single most important economic activity and the most valuable in terms of revenue, although natural gas production is increasingly important. The government-operated National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) produces petroleum for export and domestic consumption. Petroleum is moved by pipeline to the terminal of Khārk (Kharq) Island in the Persian Gulf and from....
  • National Justicialist Movement (Argentine history)
    in Argentine politics, a supporter of Juan Perón, a member of the Justicialist Party (Spanish Partido Justicialista), or an adherent of the populist and nationalistic policies that Perón espoused. Peronism has played an important part in Argentina’s history since the mid-1940s....
  • National Labor Reform Party (American labour organization)
    in U.S. history, a political-action movement that from 1866 to 1873 sought to improve working conditions through legislative reform rather than through collective bargaining....
  • National Labor Relations Act (United States [1935])
    the single most important piece of labour legislation enacted in the United States in the 20th century. It was enacted to eliminate employers’ interference with the autonomous organization of workers into unions....
  • National Labor Relations Board (United States government organization)
    independent federal agency created by the U.S. Congress in 1935 to administer the National Labor Relations Act (also called the Wagner Act). The act was amended in 1947 through the Taft-Hartley Act and in 1959 through the Landrum-Griffin Act....
  • National Labor Relations Board v. Fansteel Metallurgical Company (law case)
    ...until the establishment of a wire manufacturing plant in 1891. Other industries soon followed. A strike at a plant in 1937 led to a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1939 (National Labor Relations BoardFansteel Metallurgical Corporation) declaring sit-down strikes illegal. Today the city is a centre of pharmaceutical research and......
  • National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation (law case)
    ...be considered constitutional, and in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hughes attacked Roosevelt’s plan to reorganize the judiciary. On April 12, 1937, Hughes delivered the opinion in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, which sustained the right of collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (the Wa...
  • National Labor Union (American labour organization)
    in U.S. history, a political-action movement that from 1866 to 1873 sought to improve working conditions through legislative reform rather than through collective bargaining....
  • National Laboratory for High Energy Physics (laboratory, Tsukuba, Japan)
    ...storage rings are sometimes used, in particular if the electrons and positrons are to have different energies. In the PEP-II storage rings at Stanford University and in the KEK-B facility at the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics (KEK) in Tsukuba, electrons and positrons are stored at different energies so that they have different values of momentum. When they annihilate, the net......
  • national lands (French history)
    ...property—about 10 percent of the land in France—“at the disposition of the nation.” This property was designated as biens nationaux, or national lands. The government then issued large-denomination notes called assignats, underwritten and guaranteed by the value of that land. It intended to sell national lands to the public, whi...
  • National, Le (French newspaper)
    ...Third Republic. He worked first on the staff of the Courrier Français, a journal that opposed the restoration of the monarchy, and then, with Thiers and Armand Carrel, he founded Le National in 1830. This newspaper was instrumental in precipitating the July Revolution, which resulted in the accession of Louis-Philippe as French king. Mignet gave up politics and journalism.....
  • National League (political party, Poland)
    A reaction to that situation developed in the 1890s that had both a nationalist and a socialist character. The National Democratic movement originated with a Polish League organized in Switzerland; by 1893 the organization had transformed into the clandestine National League, based in Warsaw. It stressed its all-Polish character, rejected loyalism, and promoted national resistance, even......
  • National League (baseball)
    oldest existing major-league professional baseball organization in the United States. The league began play in 1876 as the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, replacing the failed National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. The league’s supremacy was challenged by several rival organizations over the years, beginning with the American Association in 1882–91. O...
  • National League for Democracy (political party, Myanmar)
    ...in the elections, which were held in May 1990; of these the most important were the dominant BSPP, which had changed its name to the National Unity Party (NUP), and the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD)....
  • National League for Nursing
    ...L. Dock). She was an early member of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses of the United States and Canada (later the National League for Nursing Education; now the National League for Nursing) and twice served as president....
  • National League for Nursing Education
    ...L. Dock). She was an early member of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses of the United States and Canada (later the National League for Nursing Education; now the National League for Nursing) and twice served as president....
  • National League of Colored Women (American organization)
    American organization formed at a convention in Washington, D.C., as the product of the merger in 1896 of the National Federation of Afro-American Women and the National League of Colored Women—organizations that had arisen out of the African American women’s club movement. Founders of the NACW included Harriet Tubman, Frances E.W. Harpe...
  • National League of Professional Baseball Clubs (baseball)
    oldest existing major-league professional baseball organization in the United States. The league began play in 1876 as the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, replacing the failed National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. The league’s supremacy was challenged by several rival organizations over the years, beginning with the American Association in 1882–91. O...
  • National Lending Library for Science and Technology (library, London, United Kingdom)
    ...225,000 volumes were destroyed at the British Museum, and tens of thousands of newspapers were burned at Colindale. Repairs to damaged buildings were carried out in the 1950s and ’60s. In 1962 the National Lending Library for Science and Technology was established at Boston Spa, Yorkshire. The Newspaper Library became part of the British Library in 1973, but in the late 1990s its collect...
  • National Liberal Federation (British political organization)
    He had kept his Midlothian seat, unopposed, and carried with him into the new Parliament a personal following 190 strong, supported by the National Liberal Federation, the most powerful political machine in the country. He devoted the next six years to an effort to convince the British electorate that to grant Home Rule to the Irish nation would be an act of justice and wisdom. He spoke at many......
  • National Liberal Party (political party, Denmark)
    ...the liberal German-speaking population in Schleswig opposed autocratic rule and demanded a free constitution as well as affiliation with Holstein and the German Confederation, the emerging Danish National Liberal movement called for Schleswig to be incorporated into Denmark. This demand came to be called the Eider Program, named for the Eider River, which formed the southern boundary of......
  • National Liberal Party (political party, Estonia)
    In January 1905 the revolution that started in Russia spread immediately to Estonia. Jaan Tönisson founded a National Liberal Party and organized its first congress in Tallinn on November 27. The 800 delegates soon split into a Liberal and a Radical wing, but both voted for resolutions demanding political autonomy for Estonia. In December Päts summoned a peasant congress in Tallinn.....
  • National Liberal Party (political party, Germany)
    political party that was active first in Prussia and the North German Confederation from 1867, then in Germany in 1871–1918. With largely middle-class support, the National Liberals hoped to make the government under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck less autocratic. Originally a moderate section of the old Prussian Libe...
  • National Liberation Army (Colombian guerrilla group)
    Marxist guerrilla groups began appearing in Colombia during Valencia’s presidency. The first was the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional; ELN), which was created by a group of Colombian students who had studied in Cuba. Founded in 1964, the ELN followed strategies espoused by Che Guevara. Another guerrilla group, which followed two years later, was the......
  • National Liberation Army (Algerian military organization)
    During the Algerian war for independence, the National Liberation Army (Armée de Libération Nationale [ALN]), under the command of Col. Houari Boumedienne, acted as the military arm of the FLN. From camps stationed behind Tunisian and Moroccan borders, the ALN’s external contingent provided logistical support and weaponry to ALN forces within the country. The war for independe...
  • National Liberation Army of Iran (Iranian political organization)
    Most Iranian dissident groups in exile gradually shed their divergent views and agreed that they should work for a democratic political order in Iran. One remaining exception was the National Liberation Army of Iran, a leftist Islamic group based in Iraq that was set up by the Mojāhedīn-e Khalq. But change was evident even in this organization; its officer corps had become mostly......
  • National Liberation Committee (Polish history)
    ...National Army), which was loyal to the British-backed government in exile. The Polish question, moreover, was still unresolved, and in July the Soviets established, at Lublin, a Committee of National Liberation independent of the London Poles. In Romania, despite the government’s change of side in August, the Soviets proceeded to disband the Romanian Army; and early in September they......
  • National Liberation, Committee of (Italian political organization)
    ...included roughly 20,000 partisans, and both Socialists and Liberals had significant armed bands in some areas. Partisans of different political persuasions normally worked together in local Committees of National Liberation (CLNs), which coordinated strategy, cooperated with the Allies, administered liberated areas, and appointed new officials. Above all, they organized the uprisings in......
  • National Liberation Front (political organization, Vietnam)
    Vietnamese political organization formed on Dec. 20, 1960, to effect the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government and the reunification of North and South Vietnam. An overtly communist party was established in 1962 as a central component of the NLF, but both the military arm, the Viet Cong, and the political organization of the NLF included many noncommunists. The NLF was represented by its ow...
  • National Liberation Front (political party, Algeria)
    the only constitutionally legal party in Algeria from 1962 to 1989. The party was a continuation of the revolutionary body that directed the Algerian war of independence against France (1954–62)....
  • National Liberation Front (nationalist, usually socialist, movement)
    ...
  • National Liberation Front (political organization, Yemen)
    ...however, Aden became the focus of a struggle between two rival nationalist organizations, the Egyptian-supported Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) and the Marxist-oriented National Liberation Front (NLF), for eventual control of the country. It was as a part of the NLF-ruled People’s Republic of Southern Yemen that Aden achieved its independence on Nov. 30, 1967, a...
  • National Liberation Front-National Popular Liberation Army (political organization, Greece)
    communist-sponsored resistance organization (formed September 1941) and its military wing (formed December 1942), which operated in occupied Greece during World War II. Fighting against the Germans and the Italians as well as against other guerrilla bands, particularly EDES, EAM-ELAS became the most powerful guerrilla band in the country. It...
  • national liberation movement (society)
    ...the theory failed to analyze adequately the situation in the Soviet Union and in the socialist camp. Even in communist countries, nationalism seems to have proved more powerful than socialism: “national liberation” movements have appeared and have had to be forcibly subdued in the Soviet Union, despite its communist regime. Also, war between socialist states is not unthinkable,......
  • National Liberation Party (political party, Costa Rica)
    ...Arias studied economics at the University of Costa Rica and earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Essex in England. In the 1960s he began working for the moderate socialist National Liberation Party (Partido de Liberación Nacional; PLN), and in 1972 he was appointed minister of planning in the government of President José Figueres Ferrer, a post he held......
  • national library
    In most countries there is a national or state library or a group of libraries maintained by national resources, usually bearing responsibility for publishing a national bibliography and for maintaining a national bibliographical information centre. National libraries strive principally to collect and to preserve the nation’s literature, though they try to be as international in the range o...
  • National Library of Australia (library, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia)
    ...rich collections—notably of manuscripts from the Austrian monasteries and from the library of Matthias I Corvinus, dispersed after the capture of his capital, Buda, by the Turks in 1526. The National Library of Australia in Canberra, formally created by legislation in 1960, grew out of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library, established in 1901....
  • National Library of China (library, Beijing, China)
    The Beijing Library, which holds the collections of the National Library of China, is located in the southern Haidian district, just west of the zoo. The library inherited books and archives from the renowned Imperial Wenyuange library collection of the Qing dynasty that has existed for more than 500 years and that, in turn, included books and manuscripts from the library of the Southern Song......
  • National Library of India (library, Calcutta, India)
    ...four million volumes. Based on the collections of the former Imperial Library (1872), it is organized like the U.S. Library of Congress and publishes a computer-generated national bibliography. The National Library of India (formerly the Imperial Library) in Calcutta was founded in 1903. It is the largest library in India and holds a fine collection of rare books and manuscripts. In some......
  • National Library of Medicine (library, Washington, District of Columbia, United States)
    ...Washington, D.C. (1864–95), Billings developed the library later known as the Army Medical Library. Under successive directors it grew into the Surgeon General’s Library and ultimately the National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medical reference centre. His attempt to construct a logical classification system for the library resulted in his founding of the Ind...
  • National Library of Wales (library, Aberystwyth, Wales, United Kingdom)
    The National Library of Wales (1907) at Aberystwyth, like the British Library, receives copies of virtually all books published in the United Kingdom. It is also the main Welsh reference library and a repository of documents and manuscripts relating to Wales from the earliest times. The National Museum of Wales (1907) is situated in Cardiff; the Museum of Welsh Life, in the castle and grounds......
  • National Lutheran Council (council of churches, United States)
    cooperative agency for four Lutheran churches whose membership included about 95 percent of all Lutherans in the U.S., established Jan. 1, 1967, as a successor to the National Lutheran Council (NLC). The member churches were the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches....
  • National Malaise, A (Speech by Carter)
    ...
  • National Marcian Library (building, Venice, Italy)
    The Campanile stands close to the 21 bays of the Old Library (1529, also called the National Marcian Library or the Library of St. Mark), on the western side of the piazzetta. The library was designed by Sansovino to house a great collection of humanist texts and manuscripts bequeathed in 1468 to the republic by Bessarion, Latin patriarch of Constantinople. Now a major research library, it......
  • National Marine Fisheries Service (United States government agency)
    ...to the biodiversity of the world’s oceans, and contemporary information published for fisheries in the United States can serve as an example of the magnitude of the problem. Congress requires the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to report regularly on the status of all fisheries whose major stocks are within the country’s exclusive economic zone, or EEZ. (Beyond its territ...
  • National Maritime Museum (museum, Greenwich, London, United Kingdom)
    national museum concerned with the maritime history of Great Britain. It is situated near the River Thames in Greenwich Park, Greenwich, southeast London....
  • National Military Council (political party, Suriname)
    ...refusal to sanction trade union activity within the armed forces, a group of noncommissioned army officers seized control of the government. The coup was welcomed by most of the population. The National Military Council (Nationale Militaire Raad; NMR), installed after the coup, called on the moderate wing of the PNR to form a Cabinet composed mostly of civilians. After the new Cabinet......
  • National Military Establishment Act of 1947 (United States legislation)
    ...July, Kennan, signing himself “X,” educated the public on “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” and outlined the strategy of containment in the journal Foreign Affairs. The National Military Establishment Act of 1947 (in the works since the war) created a permanent Joint Chiefs of Staff, a single secretary of defense, the U.S. Air Force as a separate service with it...
  • National Military Organization (Jewish right-wing underground movement)
    Jewish right-wing underground movement in Palestine, founded in 1931. At first supported by many non-Socialist Zionist parties, in opposition to the Haganah, it became in 1936 an instrument of the Revisionist Party, an extreme nationalist group that had seceded from the World Zionist Organization and whose policies called for the use of force, if necessary, to establish a Jewish...
  • National Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (German government agency)
    After the Nazis seized power, Goebbels took control of the national propaganda machinery. A National Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was created for him, and he became president of the newly formed “Chamber of Culture.” In this capacity he controlled, besides propaganda as such, the press, radio, theatre, films, literature, music, and the fine arts. In May 1933 he......
  • National Missile Defense system (United States)
    ...exchange. During the course of the 1990s, attention turned to the risk of small-scale missile attacks from so-called “rogue” states, such as North Korea or Iraq. With this in mind, a National Missile Defense (NMD) system was proposed in the United States. Although it would involve no more than 100 interceptors, it was a system designed to provide nationwide defense and so would......
  • national monument (American protected area)
    in the United States, any of numerous areas reserved by act of Congress or presidential proclamation for the protection of objects or places of historical, prehistoric, or scientific interest. They include natural physical features, remains of Indian cultures, and places of historical importance....
  • National Movement (Spanish political movement)
    ...by his control of the armed forces and by his ability to play off the groups that supported him, in particular the Falange, the monarchists, and the church. Ultimately, the Falange lost power in the National Movement, the sole legal political organization; its attempts to create a Falangist one-party state were defeated in 1956, though tensions between the Falange and the conservative elements....
  • National Movement for Simeon II (political party, Bulgaria)
    In 1996 Simeon visited Bulgaria and most of the royal property was later returned to him. In April 2001 he announced the formation of the National Movement for Simeon II, an organization that set out to field candidates in the national legislative elections scheduled in June. When the courts ruled that the party had not met all of the requirements for registration, it joined two minor parties...
  • National Municipal League (American political organization)
    A movement already begun, to wrest control of city governments from corrupt political machines, was given tremendous impetus by the panic of 1893. The National Municipal League, organized in 1894, united various city reform groups throughout the country; corrupt local governments were overthrown in such cities as New York in 1894, Baltimore in 1895, and Chicago in 1896–97. And so it went......
  • National Museum (museum, Delhi, India)
    A movement already begun, to wrest control of city governments from corrupt political machines, was given tremendous impetus by the panic of 1893. The National Municipal League, organized in 1894, united various city reform groups throughout the country; corrupt local governments were overthrown in such cities as New York in 1894, Baltimore in 1895, and Chicago in 1896–97. And so it went......
  • National Museum (museum, Bogotá, Colombia)
    ...the product of extraordinarily skilled craftsmen, whereas the Bogotá Museum of Colonial Art has a rich collection of criollo (Creole) religious sculpture and painting. The National Museum displays treasures and relics dating from prehistoric times to the present and possesses various collections of Colombian painting and sculpture. The July 20 Museum contains documents......
  • National Museum (museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
    ...of the National Museum. The origins of the Indian Museum in Calcutta were similar, based on the collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which commenced in 1784. In South America a number of national museums originated in the early 19th century: the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires was founded in 1812; and Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, which owes it...
  • National Museum (museum, Niamey, Niger)
    ...one of the earliest of these, also administers a museum of traditional buildings, while others have developed workshops where traditional crafts can be demonstrated. Crafts are also a feature of the National Museum in Niamey, Niger, and products of these workshops are exported to Europe and North America....
  • National Museum (museum, Taranto, Italy)
    Italy’s museums contain some of the most important collections of artifacts from ancient civilizations. The permanent collection in the National Museum in Taranto provides one of the most important insights into the history of Magna Graecia, while the archaeological collections in the Roman National Museum in Rome and in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples are considered among the ...
  • National Museum (museum, Tokyo, Japan)
    the first and foremost art museum in Japan, located in Ueno Park, Tokyo....
  • National Museum (museum, Damascus, Syria)
    ...city’s heritage with contemporary developments. The prestigious Arabic Language Academy of Damascus (1919) is a bastion of Arabic language, working both to preserve and modernize the language. The National Museum, established in 1936, boasts an extraordinary collection of artifacts from across the country, representing six millennia of civilization. A military museum occupies the cells o...
  • national museum
    The level of state control varies from country to country. In France, for instance, the state has traditionally exercised greater control over museums. A number of the national museums in Paris operate under a semiautonomous administrative council, with an executive chairman who has a dual responsibility for policy and executive matters. In addition, there are a number of national museums......
  • National Museum of African Art (museum, Washington, District of Columbia, United States)
    American museum of African art, part of the Smithsonian Institution, located on the Mall in Washington, D.C....
  • National Museum of American Art (museum, Washington, District of Columbia, United States)
    first federal art collection of the United States, housing the world’s largest collection of American art. The Washington, D.C., museum showcases more than 40,000 works of art, representing 7,000 American artists. Featured permanent collections include colonial portraiture, 19th-century landscapes, Impressionism, realism, photography, crafts, folk art, African American art, and Latino art....
  • National Museum of Anthropology (museum, Mexico City, Mexico)
    in Mexico City, world-famous repository of some 600,000 art and other objects relating to Mexico. Many anthropological, ethnological, and archaeological materials in the collection date from the pre-Hispanic period. Exhibited on two large floors, these displays show ancient human remains and art objects; figures and pottery of the Pre-Classical Period that began about 5000 bc; and fr...
  • National Museum of Antiquities (museum, Ravenna, Italy)
    Ravenna’s National Museum of Antiquities, housed in the cloisters of the Church of San Vitale, has an important collection of classical and Early Christian antiquities, including inscriptions, icons, ceramics, ivories and other sculptures, and sarcophagi. The Church of Santa Maria in Porto Fuori, built after 1069, was, until its destruction in World War II, the only important surviving buil...
  • National Museum of Arms and Armour (armour and weapons collection, Tower of London, London, United Kingdom)
    in the United Kingdom, a collection of weapons and armour that was originally situated in the White Tower at the Tower of London....
  • National Museum of Australia (museum, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia)
    ...National Maritime Museum (opened 1991). The Melbourne Museum, which opened in 2000, is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and houses a diverse range of cultural and scientific exhibits. The National Museum of Australia in Canberra (opened 2001) maintains an extensive collection of exhibits exploring the history of the land and peoples of the country. The National Gallery, the National......
  • National Museum of Canada (museum, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
    The middle of the 19th century saw the establishment of a number of other well-known museums. In Canada the collection of the National Museum commenced in 1843 in Montreal as part of the Geological Survey, while the precursor of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Ontario Provincial Museum, was founded in 1855. In Australia the National Museum of Victoria was established at Melbourne in......
  • National Museum of Ceylon (museum, Colombo, Sri Lanka)
    ...Peking (Beijing) and the Northern Territory Museum in Tientsin. The collections established in the Grand Palace at Bangkok in 1874 became, about 60 years later, the National Museum of Thailand. The National Museum of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) opened to the public in 1877; the Sarawak Museum (now in Malaysia) opened in 1891; and the Peshāwar Museum, in Pakistan, opened in 1906....
  • National Museum of Denmark (museum, Copenhagen, Denmark)
    ...the three-part system of classifying prehistory into the Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages). This museum was merged with three others (of ethnography, antiquities, and numismatics) in 1892 to form the National Museum of Denmark. In France the Museum of National Antiquities opened at Saint-Germain-en-Laye late in the 18th century. It still acts as a national archaeological repository, as does the......
  • National Museum of Fine Arts (museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
    national art collection, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, inherited from the Imperial Academy, later the Imperial Museum of Fine Arts. It was founded after the arrival of French artists in Brazil in 1816 and moved to its present building in 1904. The museum collection includes works of painting and sculpture by Brazilian artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including ...
  • National Museum of History (museum, Mexico City, Mexico)
    in Mexico City, an offshoot of the National Museum of Anthropology (founded 1825). In 1940 the National Historical Museum became a separate institution specializing in Mexican history from the Spanish conquest in the 1500s to the promulgation of the constitution of 1917. The museum moved to Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City, in 1941, opening in 1944....
  • National Museum of India (museum, Delhi, India)
    in New Delhi, museum devoted to Indian art history and iconography as well as to Buddhist studies. The museum was merged with the Asian Antiquities Museum to bring the treasures of India and Central Asia together. The collections include examples of art and archaeology, anthropology, decorative arts, and epigraphy....
  • National Museum of Iraq (museum, Baghdad, Iraq)
    museum of antiquities located in Baghdad, Iraq, featuring Iraqi art and artifacts dating from the Stone Age civilization of the Fertile Crescent to the Middle Ages....
  • National Museum of Kenya (museum, Nairobi, Kenya)
    ...national museums at Bulawayo and Harare (then known as Salisbury) were founded in 1901, the Uganda Museum originated in 1908 from collections assembled by the British District Commissioners, and the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi was commenced by the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society in 1909. Mozambique’s first museum, the Dr. Alvaro de Castro Museum in Maputo, was foun...
  • National Museum of Korea (museum, Seoul, South Korea)
    ...the 19th century, when Korea was forced to enter into treaties with foreign governments. In 1900 a British architect, at the request of the Chosŏn government, designed the renaissance revival Tŏksu Palace in Seoul. The stone building, which later became the National Museum, was completed in 1909. With the construction of Western-style buildings in Seoul came the need for European....
  • National Museum of Modern Art (museum, Tokyo, Japan)
    museum in Tokyo devoted to important Japanese works of art of the 20th century. The collection covers works of past artists outstanding in the history of Japanese art; outstanding works of contemporary artists; and works selected for their historical importance. ...
  • National Museum of Natural History (museum, Washington, District of Coumbia, United States)
    American museum of natural history, part of the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C....
  • National Museum of Natural History (museum, Santiago, Chile)
    ...its origin to a selection of paintings presented by John VI, exiled king of Portugal, was opened to the public in 1818. Among others were the National Museum, Bogotá, Colom. (1824), and the national museums of natural history in Santiago, Chile (1830), and Montevideo, Uruguay (1837). In Canada the zoological collection of the Pictou Academy in Nova Scotia (founded in 1816) was probably.....
  • National Museum of Natural History (garden and museum, Paris, France)
    one of the world’s foremost botanical gardens, located in Paris. It was founded in 1626 as a royal garden of medicinal plants and was first opened to the public in 1650. Under the superintendence of G.-L.L. Buffon (1739–88) the garden was greatly expanded, and it developed into a centre of scientific study associated with such prominent figures of early French botany and zoology as t...
  • National Museum of New Zealand (museum, Wellington, New Zealand)
    in Wellington, general museum of science and the natural history of New Zealand. A Maori section contains artifacts and carvings. The collections include relics of Captain James Cook, particularly the original figurehead from his ship Resolution. A typical colonial house and a reconstructed Maori meetinghouse are displayed. A colonial section depicts the life of the earl...
  • National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions (museum, Paris, France)
    ...of traditional life at the Nordic Museum, Stockholm. This was followed 18 years later by the first open-air museum, at Skansen. Museums of both types soon appeared in other countries. Today the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Paris exemplifies a national approach within a museum building. Outdoor museums preserving traditional architecture, sometimes in situ, and often......
  • National Museum of Thailand (museum, Bangkok, Thailand)
    ...Museum of the History of China in Peking (Beijing) and the Northern Territory Museum in Tientsin. The collections established in the Grand Palace at Bangkok in 1874 became, about 60 years later, the National Museum of Thailand. The National Museum of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) opened to the public in 1877; the Sarawak Museum (now in Malaysia) opened in 1891; and the Peshāwar Museum, in......
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