There are two basic types of lighting used while photographing museum objects, continuous and strobe (flash). Each has its good and bad qualities but a well equipped photo studio has both.
Continuous lighting is simply lights that stay on all the time. They come in tungsten, fluorescent, LED and HMI. The most common (and usually cheapest) is tungsten lighting. It provides easily corrected color temp, good power for lighting large objects, and did I mention it is cheap? The big disadvantage is that the bulbs get very hot and can heat up objects and the studio. They shoot off quite a bit of UV too. Fluorescent lighting is cheap-ish, cool and lightweight. But they tend to be very under-powered, the bulbs change color temperature as they age and can be expensive to replace. LED lighting is pretty new in the photo studio, but has been used in movies for a while. I really don’t know much about it, but Alex Koloskov seems to like them on his photography blog (http://www.akelstudio.com/blog/proje...-led-lighting/). HMI lighting has been pretty much exclusive to movie studios and I’ve never used them myself. But I know of at least one photographer who uses them for product photography.
Strobe or Flash lighting is what most museums use for photographing objects. They provide constant color temp until the bulb blows, the intensity of the flash can be modified rather than having to move the light itself closer or farther away (like with tungsten), the do not give off much heat, they often have the most selection of light modifiers (reflectors, softboxes, snoots, umbrellas, etc.) and they are powerful enough to use the optimal lens aperture. However, they can be rather expensive to purchase initially. But, used equipment is all over the place so you can save money there. I really don’t have recommendations for one brand of lighting over another; I would see what you can find used and go from there.
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