Musical instruments take center stage at the Museum of Making Music! Exhibitions explore how and why these instruments develop—who makes them, how we gain access to them, what they sound like in the hands of those who play them.
Visitor explore and learn about why instruments are the way they are, and what drives innovation and change over time. Guest also have the opportunity to try out and play on a wide variety of hands-on instruments!
Through the Museum, the process of making music is presented through a variety of different perspectives:
Making the Instruments
Musical instrument are powerful tools of expression, both for musicians and for the people who make them. Makers create instruments that reflect and anticipate the world around them as audiences grow and change, as people and ideas move across the globe, and as advances in technology open up new possibilities.
Providing the Instruments
The people who bring musical instruments into the marketplace are passionate about connecting musicians with their tools. Navigating shifts in popular taste, enduring periods of political and economic change, and harnessing new methods of communication, music retailers have persevered to provide the world with instruments for musical expression.
Using the Instruments
Anyone who connects with a musical instrument can bring it to life. Whether playing music for themselves, sharing with those around them, or performing for others, musicians use instruments to express thoughts, feelings, and dreams that add meaning to the human experience.
Beyond the Instruments
As musical instruments are manufactured, brought to market, and played, they can come to represent something beyond themselves: works of art, catalysts for social change, sanctuaries of comfort and connection, and much more.
