11 Best WordPress Themes for Museums [2023]
Building a website on WordPress is user-friendly and straightforward, thanks to plugins and pre-built page templates. The right theme will include tools that meet your experience level and design skill, and, be purpose-built for your business, service, or industry.
Out of the hundreds of website templates available on the market, in this article, we give you the 11 best WordPress themes for museums. The front end of your museum websites should offer smooth navigational usability for visitors.
The speed at which your website runs is essential for your conversion rate, and, is directly related to the server resources allotted for your site by your web host. The backend of your museum website should provide four key features, including…
- Events Manager and Calendar Plugin
Museums are always putting on events and special exhibits. To sync your website to your calendar, and to members calendars, look for an event management plugin and a calendar plugin. Your WordPress site will automatically compile and sync RSVPs, attendees and registration lists to view from your Google account – or other synced account.
- Featured Post and Showcase Gallery
An excellent museum website needs beautiful, high-resolution displays of the past, present, and future exhibits to be visited. Visually striking galleries and parallax image sliders will give your website a polished, professional aesthetic. Also – look for a theme with a custom featured post. When visitors land on your homepage, your featured post will engage and excite, which leads to a higher site conversion rate.
- eTicket Sales and eCommerce
WordPress enables your site to handle ticket sales and souvenir sales through plugins and custom tools. Look for themes with custom WooCommerce integration and support. Your online store will boost revenue by extending the interactive museum experience before and after a guests arrival and departure. Online ticket sales are the best way to facilitate special events and daily entry. Look for a theme designed to handle ticketing and online payment methods.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Advertising, and Promotional Functions
Your museum theme should be designed with SEO in mind. Look for a theme that features SEO friendly code, and support for an SEO plugin, such as Yoast SEO. Sites that are optimized for search engines have more revenue outlets for advertisers. Look for a theme that includes built-in ad space. Once your site is set up with advertisers, increase your site traffic through social media promotions and email marketing campaigns.
Look fire a theme that features lead capture functions, social buttons and share icons, and Call-to-Action page elements. The essential services of museum websites are, the ability; to manage your upcoming and ongoing events through a synced calendar; introduce visitors to beautiful featured content on your site’s homepage; control the sale of museum tickets and souvenirs, and; increase patronage through reaching a vast online audience.
The essentials for museum websites will ensure that your site correctly functions professionally, and, is of productive benefit to your organization’s goals. Beyond these, consider your level of design experience and interest. Experienced designers and those interested in hands-on website design should look for a theme with frontend page customization capabilities. Look for a theme with a drag-and-drop page builder plugin. Beginners will benefit from a theme with simple backend menus and prebuilt pages. Look for a theme with a one-click demo import function.
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1. History – Museum & Exhibition WordPress Theme
History – Museum & Exhibition WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for museums of art, history, and science. It is perfect for users that are experienced with WordPress page design, since, it includes frontend drag-and-drop tools for customizing the demo pages layout, element placement and content.
The theme is clean and responsive, for seamless viewability on any platform – smartphone, tablet or computer. History – Museum & Exhibition WordPress Theme is modern, sophisticated and highly functional for museum website administration and usability.
Design, Features, and Usability
History – Museum & Exhibition WordPress Theme features the WPBakery Drag and Drop Page Builder plugin, formerly named Visual Composer, as well as Revolution Slider. Make fullscreen high-resolution graphics sliders for page heading and inner page sections – all with a visual building platform. No need to code anything with this theme.
For those looking to get their museums website up and running without custom page building, History offers a one-click demo setup and import function. Skip the building and start customizing your page content within the demo template pages. To see a live theme demo, click the link below. History is designed with WooCommerce support and integration, to host an online museum gift shop and facilitate ticket sales, all from your website. For a full features list, follow the download link, below.
2. SCULP – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme
.SCULP – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for modern sculpture museums and minimalist artist galleries. Available from TemplateMonster, SCULP is perfect for the beginning WordPress theme designer. The theme is clean, simple to use, and engaging. If you want a theme with easy-to-use menus for page customization, SCULP offers everything you need, and nothing you don’t.
Design, Features, and Usability
.SCULP – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme features easy to use backend WordPress tools, such as Advanced Theme Options and custom templates. Seamlessly import the theme demo into your WordPress website, and start customizing on-page content from your dashboard. Pre-built templates include a Homepage, Default Page, Testimonials, Full-width Page, and Archives.
.SCULP – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme is built on Cherry Framework version 3.1.5, and, offers a built-in calendar feature, to manage the promotion of upcoming events on your museum site. This theme does not feature custom WooCommerce support. However, it features a media-friendly design, and supports video and audio media uploads with custom media players.
Messages from site visitors and members arrive directly in your mailbox, thanks to the built-in contact form. For more information on the features of SCULP – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme, and to see a live theme demo, follow the links below.
3. Museum – Responsive WordPress Theme
Museum – Responsive WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for museums that attract a high volume of international site traffic. Museum – Responsive WordPress Theme is ideally suited in aesthetic and functionality, for museums of the most important international recognition. This theme is recommended for users of a higher theme design skill level.It includes backend options and graphics effects to offer a polished, professional and engaging experience to site visitors.
Design, Features, and Usability
Museum – Responsive WordPress Theme features engaging CSS3 graphics effects and transitional animations, as well as built-in Bootstrap shortcodes. The theme includes the Mailchimp Newsletter plugin, two homepage variants from which to choose, and the Working Contact Forms plugin. This that caters to designers with a bit of experience in WordPress site design and development, as code knowledge is useful for sophisticated page elements.
You will quickly create and customize page elements and site navigation features, thanks to the themes clean coding and integrations for your backend dashboard. It includes Google Maps and Web Fonts, with over 600 typography options – and more. For a full features list, and to see a live theme demo, click the links below.
4. Max Museum – History and Archeology WordPress Theme
Max Museum – History and Archeology WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for museums of visual art and design. This high powered theme is great for beginners and design experts, alike. It includes all the necessary tools for making front end page alterations and backend code customizations.
It is a clean, modern, responsive WordPress theme for museums, art galleries, artists, curators – and more. Max Museum – History and Archeology WordPress Theme is perfect for large museums, public city museums, art galleries, and high-end art curators.
Design, Features, and Usability
Max Museum – History and Archeology WordPress Theme features a highly customizable model. It includes the WPBakery Drag and Drop Page Builder plugin, previously named Visual Composer, for frontend page customizations. Change the layout, element placement, content, colors – and everything else – with a simple click of your mouse.
Max Museum also features the Revolution Slider plugin, to build high quality, beautiful slider displays for your museum’s website. Max Museum is designed with a one-click demo import and setup process. Only import the demo and begin customizing your site pages and content.
This theme features high usability with all the most popular premium and free WordPress plugins on the market. It features WooCommerce integration support, the Contact Form 7 plugin, and SEO friendly HTML. For more information on the features of Max Museum – History and Archeology WordPress Theme, and to see a live theme demo, follow the links below.
5. The Curator: Premier WP Timeline Theme for Artists
The Curator: Premier WP Timeline Theme for Artists is the best WordPress theme for museums to archive their works chronologically through media. This theme can be used for museum archives, artists portfolio, unique exhibit gallery, and more. It is focused on the higher forms of artistic expression, with a clean and minimalist site layout. The Curator is an excellent option for simple museum websites to display a specific collection of works.
Design, Features, and Usability
The Curator: Premier WP Timeline Theme for Artists features a timeline theme design, which focuses on the chronological categorization of an artist’s, or collections digital media. This theme offers usability for searching specific pieces of art by name, tag, category, or date. You can customize the color schemes, text, background, media galleries, and widgets from the WordPress Customizer and Admin Panel on your dashboard. Click the links below for a full features list, and, to see a live theme demo.
6. Dinosaur Museum – Discovering the Unknown WordPress Theme
Dinosaur Museum – Discovering the Unknown WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for museums and exhibits that feature dinosaur displays. Dinosaur Museum is available through TemplateMonster, and, includes all of the standard features of TemplateMonster themes. This minimalist theme cuts out the fluff and is very usable by WordPress theme design beginners.
Design, Features, and Usability
Dinosaur Museum – Discovering the Unknown WordPress Theme is designed on Cherry Framework and features HTML plus JS animations. With the built-in audio and video players, display media of your dinosaur museum and exhibits in stunning quality. This theme is designed to support social share functionality, sortable galleries, and a custom Calendar plugin.
Dinosaur Museum is customized and edited from the backend of WordPress, using the Advanced Theme Options on your WordPress dashboard. Beginners to WordPress theme design can populate their website with pre-built page templates, which include templates for Archives, Default page, FAQ, Filter Pholio Page, Full-Width Page, Homepage, and Testimonials. Click the links below to see a full features list and a live theme demo.
7. Vestige Museum – Responsive WordPress Theme
Vestige Museum – Responsive WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for museums that are for kids and families. Vestige Museum is a theme purpose-built for museums. It includes premium plugins for the unique page, element, and content customization, as well as pre-built material that is designed specifically for museums.
This theme is great for WordPress beginners since it offers a high level of customization ability from simple drop-down menus on the backend of your WordPress dashboard.
Design, Features, and Usability
Vestige Museum – Responsive WordPress Theme features a great mixture of functionality and simplicity. While the theme does not include a frontend drag and drop page building tool, it does add the Slider Revolution premium plugin, to create beautiful, high resolution, full-width gallery sliders for your site pages.
The theme is retina ready and fully responsive, for seamless viewability from mobile viewing devices, as well as high-resolution image support for mobile devices. Vestige Museum – Responsive WordPress Theme includes the Working Contact Form plugin, as well as Isotope Galleries premium plugin.
There is no shortage of ways to create a unique, memorable display for your museum. The theme includes custom built social icons and share functions for promoting your museum over social media, as well as, Google Maps support. And, the entire theme features cleanly written SEO friendly code. For more information on the theme, and to see a live theme demo, click on the links below.
8. Divi
The Divi Theme is the best WordPress theme for museums with a highly proficient designer and high-end functionality requirements. Divi is a multipurpose theme, which can be used to create thoroughly professional and functional websites on WordPress. Museums will be benefited y Divis wealth of gallery display options, page elements, and media post types. For museums that want to start small – yet retain exponential website scaling potential – Divi is a great option.
Design, Features, and Usability
The Divi Theme features over 46 custom page elements, with which to use for the population of your museum websites pages and posts. These elements include all of the essential features of a website, like buttons, media players, page dividers, galleries, number counters – and many more.
Divi is designed to automatically fit page elements together in the most aesthetically clean placement. Whatever your site, Divi makes it possible. Divi also includes over 20 pre-made homepage demo templates. You are sure to find a demo that captures the spirit and brand of your museum. To read more on Divi’s included features, or to see a live theme demo click on the links below.
9. Pharaoh – Museum & Exhibition HTML Template
Pharaoh – Museum & Exhibition HTML Template is the best WordPress theme for museums of history, of a small size. This theme is a simple HTML template with a wealth of possibility for museums of science, history, natural history, and more. The creative and modern design compliments museums with ancient knowledge and epic exhibits. This theme conveys the excitement of a journey that is yet to begin.
Design, Features, and Usability
Pharaoh – Museum & Exhibition HTML Template features valid HTML5 and CSS3 code, to support high-quality graphics animations and transitions. It is built and designed on Bootstrap Framework version 3 and is cross-browser compatible. This theme is perfect for those that are inexperienced in WordPress theme customization, as, it provides minimal options for alterations.
If you do not know how to implement and alter code, then you will get what you see with this theme. It is an excellent option for those that find the theme demo to be aesthetically satisfactory, as, it offers minimal customizability. All customization of the sites pages, posts, and layout is performed from the backend of your WordPress dashboard. For more information, a full features list, and to see a live theme demo, follow the links below.
10. DinoLand – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme
DinoLand – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for museums featuring kids dinosaur exhibits.DinoLand is a great template on which to build your dinosaur themed museum, and, it is constructed to be easily used by admins of any experience level. Only import the themes demo pages, and select the pages which you would like to customize for publishing. You will be amazed at how quickly your website can be up and running, with DinoLand – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme.
Design, Features, and Usability
DinoLand – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme features the Advanced Theme Options menu, Dropdown Menu, and Admin Panel, to perform site, page, and content customization. The theme includes multiple custom page templates, which include Archives, Default, FAQ, Filter Pholio, Full Width, Homepage, and Testimonials.
For custom page building, DinoLand supports all of the most popular premium WordPress plugins, such as WPBakery Drag and Drop Page Builder, and Elementor Page Builder. Users can see your museums location on Google Maps, and search your site by content tags.
DinoLand includes a Contact Form and is coded in CSS3, HTML5, JQuery, and LESS. For more information on the features of DinoLand – Sculpture Responsive WordPress Theme, and to see a live theme demo, follow the links below.
11. Zoo – Responsive One Page WordPress Theme
Zoo – Responsive One Page WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for museums with animals, museums of natural history, and zoos. Zoo is a great theme to capture the majesty and elegance of the animal kingdom. It includes lots of tools for customizing and editing the theme demo content, and is easy to setup and use for beginners. With sophisticated animations and graphics transitions, your visitors will be drawn-in to your museum’s website with Zoo – Responsive One Page WordPress Theme.
Design, Features, and Usability
Zoo – Responsive One Page WordPress Theme features a custom-made animated shortcode generator, for efficiently implementing shortcode components to populate your website. This unique theme is designed to support parallax on any page element, component, widget, background, or image. Zoo is an excellent theme for animal museums and beautiful gallery displays.
Zoo automatically resizes to fit smartphones, tablets and computers, thanks to the fully responsive design. It is retina ready, to support high-resolution graphics and images on mobile devices, and, allows users to customize page sections with a drag-and-drop page ordering tool. All demo content is included with your purchase of Zoo – Responsive One Page WordPress Theme. For more information, a full features list, and, to see a live theme demo, follow the links below for Zoo.
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