 |
| Image: MIM Website |
If Falk and Dierking, in "Learning from Museums: Visitor Experience and the Making of Meaning" are correct in contending that the top motivations for visiting a museum is education and entertainment, the Museum of Musical Instruments has hit the jackpot. Confident of the quality of the visitor experience the museum does not apologize for its $20.00 tickets (there is a discount for children). In the five years since its opening in 2010 it has risen to the top Tripadvisor attraction in Phoenix.
Founded by Robert J. Ulrich the former CEO and Target and his friend Marc Felix is modeled after the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels. The intent is to represent the instruments and music of every country, to appreciate diverse cultures through music, the "language of the soul". Today about 200 countries are represented in 370 installations showcasing more than 6,000 of the 15,000 instruments in the collection.
The instruments are not just lined up in cases with explanatory notes. Each visitor is issued a control box with a headset that is activated by hotspots. Approaching a display activates the control box and and the viewer hears the music of that display. In general, the apparatus worked well. Just once or twice was the music coming from across the aisle and that problem was solved by more careful aiming of the control box.
Our visit was limited to the Geographical Galleries: Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania, Europe, Latin America and the United States/Canada. Here we see the meshing of preservation of culture and education with entertainment. The emphasis is on the visitor and "learning is fun". Multi-disciplinary displays contain geography, history, dance, and music. Van Aalst and Boogaarts in "From Museum to Mass Entertainment" term this "edutainment". Our one-time visit confirms that the MIM is truly "edutainment". The concerts, visiting exhibits, classes, summer camps listed on the museums website also provide both education and entertainment.
In the tour below are example displays of Rwanda/Burundi and Japan. The geography panels was especially helpful as in Rwanda and Burundi, countries surrounded by Tanzania, Uganda and and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This visitor, for one, certainly needed that prompt for a location reference. Another panel with the geography of African languages versus the geography of countries brought home the reasons for divisiveness in sub-Saharan Africa.
To look inside the museum check out this Google Street View:
For an overview of the scope of the museum watch this 3 minute Youtube video:
 |
| Geography, History, Costume, and Music of Rwanda and Burundi |
 |
| Japanese Theatre, Music, Costume, Geography, Puppets and Masks |
No comments:
Post a Comment