Museum of Music: Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, I described and criticized the sorry state of public collections of music as compared to other prominent arts. Continuing with that thought below, I outline ideas for the creation of a modern multimedia driven Museum of Music (MoM).


Unlike paintings or sculpture, presenting music en mass is hard. If you walk into a good-sized room of an art gallery, you might see as many as a dozen paintings in close proximity, perhaps with a few statues filling the void between walls. Tourists can dart through the room, taking only passing glances at the modest and masterful alike; and art aficionados can dissect little known works, brush stroke by brush stroke. Part of the fun of art museums is that you can experience the art at the speed and level of depth that you want.


Music needs a solution to the same problem. Average listeners can't stay awake through an entire symphony, and even if they could, without modest training, they wouldn't appreciate what they were hearing. On the other hand, a former cellist who has season tickets to the Philharmonic, wouldn't enjoy being told that Beethoven's 9th symphony can be summed up by a snippet of the Ode to Joy melody.

An audio guide device used by the Louvre.

The solution can already be found in any major museum. Visitors to any modern museums can use some sort of audio device to access commentary on or descriptions of the items, artists, or time periods relevant to what they are observing. It wouldn't take much to adapt this type of system to play music samples or entire pieces for each individual listener in the MoM.


In the age of the iPod and the smartphone, another potentially cost-saving approach is to create a media app that museum goers can download onto their devices. This idea has gained traction because it eliminates the need for the maintenance and storage of thousands of museum owned electronics. However, as of now it seems that the cons outweigh the pros. For example, not everyone has a smartphone, and those that do are spread over a half-dozen operating systems, each of which are updated as often as several times a year. The responsibility of programming upkeep is likely not something museums would like to take on.

The most essential part of a MoM that would distinguish it from other museums is the abundant use of live performance. Much as science and history themed museums often have small auditoriums for demonstrations or documentary films, the MoM should be supplemented by frequent and diverse performances spread throughout the museum. Assuming the MoM would be located in a large, culturally endowed metropolitan area, there would be ample supply of aspiring or student musicians who could play for cheap on a day to day basis, as well as prestigious acts and orchestras that could perform the occasional benefit concert.

A Greek Theater. I'm working on getting
a rendering of my plan for a MoM auditorium.
In the mean time, use your imagination. 

The typical in-museum musical venue would require a soundproof auditorium, so as not to disturb he wandering visitors in surrounding exhibits. But just as with the auditoriums in other museums, the isolation of these dead-end caves would discourage many visitors from entering. This would in-turn dissuade artists from offering their time. An elegant solution to this is to make the auditorium walls transparent and lower the stage to the base of a small Greek theater, so that anyone in the cooridors surrounding the exhibit could see the group playing. The visitors could then either enter the auditorium to watch the performance live, or tune their audio tour devices to the live music feed to get a taste of what's playing while watching from above through the glass.

A Map of Western Music Genres through Time [Click on image to see in full-def]

As with any museum, an effective MoM would need to organize it's exhibits in an interesting and logical way. Historical museum exhibits are grouped by eras, with special exhibits on important events; paintings and sculpture are grouped by period, with large exhibits on specific artists. Music should be generally organized by related genres and regions with other sections for musical instruments and notation. Special exhibits could explore specific composers or bands.

Example Museum Sections:

• Early Western Music
• Orchestral Music
• Slave Songs to Rhythm & Blues
• Rhythm & Blues to Rock
• Blues to Funk
• Jazz
• Folk
• Opera & Theatre

• Native American Music
• African Music
• Eastern European Music
• Middle Eastern Music
• Indian Subcontinent
• Asian Music

• Etc.

The specifics of the Museum's organization are less important that the realization that it is possible to reduce the immense complexity of this art into manageable, logical divisions.


The lack of a large scale museum for an art form so ubiquitous in our society is surprising and sad. Though its ubiquity obviates the need that other art forms have to raise basic awareness, music's vast diversity and fascinating history is still lost on the general public. A Museum of Music would make accessible the grand art form that is hiding in plain sound.