Museums play a key role in shaping civic identities across generations. They act as ‘authentic’, ‘authoritative’, ‘consensual’ or ‘accepted’ narration of a society’s historic trajectory and identity for its own people as well as for the outsiders. The definition of a museum by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) as it stands today is, “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.”

Globally, museums are products of modernity. It is difficult to give an exact number of museums in the world, as there are so many museums opened every year. The same is true of Sri Lanka. Today, Sri Lanka boasts of over 120 museums, of all subjects and sizes. The first museum opened in then Ceylon in 1877 as the Colombo National Museum, with a collection of 804 objects. Today it conserves over 100,000 objects and is joined by over 100 other museums across the island. Not all museums are state- run, though a majority of them still are. The increasing popularity of museums is perhaps connected to the fact that they serve multiple needs of humanity, to conserve, to educate and to engage the public in learning from their past and re-imagine their futures.

This database of Sri Lankan museums is envisioned as starting point to further study our museums. It is meant to provide basic information for those who wish to research and engage in museum and public education. We have provided filtering options by

- Name and Location - Subject matter or focus of collection - Responsible Administrative Institution - Year of Commencement - Contact details, where available