Musical Instrument Museum (Brussels)
The Musical Instrument Museum ( Dutch : Muziekinstrumentenmuseum , French : Musée des instruments de musique , abbreviated mim ) is a department of the Royal Museums for Art and History in Brussels . It emerged from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in 1877 and is located on the Kunstberg near the Royal Palace .
The buildings
The museum is housed in two historic buildings on Koningsplein / Hofberg streets. The neoclassical building on Koningsplein was designed by Barnabé Guimard in 1774 . The other building was built in 1899 in the Art Nouveau style by Paul Saintenoy and originally served as a luxury department store under the name Old England . A third building was newly constructed and serves as a warehouse .
history
The beginnings of the instrument collection lie in two collections that came into the possession of the Belgian state. A collection of historical instruments was bought by the musicologist François-Joseph Fétis . Another collection of Indian instruments came from the Bengali musicologist Rajah Sourindro Mohun Tagore . Since 1877 the collection has been in the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where it was used for didactic purposes. The constantly expanding collection was housed in different buildings until 1978, when the current buildings were acquired and converted. Since 1992 the collection has been part of the Royal Museum of Art and History. In 2000 the musical instrument museum was opened in its current location.
Collection and Museum
The museum shows the following topics on 4 floors:
- Mechanical and electronic instruments
- Instruments of European folk music and non-European music
- European instruments in their development from the Middle Ages to the 19th century , as well as the
- Development of the keyboard instruments .
In total, the collection includes around 8,000 instruments, 1200 of which are on display. The museum has a library , a concert hall , a restaurant on the top floor and a museum shop .
The visitor can hear sound samples from many of the instruments through a headphone system. The sound sample is automatically triggered when the visitor steps up to the respective showcase.
The museum has around 125,000 visitors annually.
Occasionally, the museum also organizes temporary exhibitions and concerts by influential contemporary inventors such as François and Bernard Baschet, Pierre Bastien , Yuri Landman , Logos Foundation, and others.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.mim.be/history
- ↑ museum. Retrieved February 19, 2017 .
Coordinates: 50 ° 50 ′ 34.2 " N , 4 ° 21 ′ 31.8" E