ABSTRACT
This entry reviews the history of the architecture of museum buildings in the Western world (Europe and the United States) where the museum as an institution originated. After a brief history of the institution, chronological sections are dedicated to the pre-eighteenth century when the gallery as a room type emerged in France and Italy, the eighteenth century during which basic architectural and spatial requirements of museums were begun to be worked out, the nineteenth century when the museum as a building type was developed, and the twentieth century and beyond when initially modernist museums rejected the nineteenth-century ideal types and at the turn to the current century eclectic and unique architectural designs, so-called signature buildings, became synonymous with museum architecture.
