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The Schubert Club to Expand Museum of Musical Instruments and Manuscripts
Visitors Can Explore Rich Musical Legacy in a New Unified Gallery
(ST. PAUL, Minn.) May 7, 2009 – Thousands more visitors will be able to enjoy The Schubert Club’s rare collection of world instruments, historic keyboards and composer manuscripts because of a planned expansion of the group’s nearly 30-year-old museum, which was announced today.
The new 4,500-square-foot gallery in downtown St. Paul’s Landmark Center will allow the organization to showcase its musical artifacts in a single large space, instead of dividing them over two floors. The Schubert Club – best known for sponsoring recitals in the Twin Cities by internationally renowned classical artists for the past 126 years – also has amassed three major collections of musical treasures it displays in the museum, which is open to the public free of charge.
Those include original letters by virtuosos such as Beethoven and Mozart, and historic instruments ranging from a pentagonal spinet built in 1542 to a 1935 Art Deco Wurlitzer piano. The museum’s world instrument collection includes Indian sitars and an Indonesian gamelan set.
“As our collections have grown over the years, we realized that our spaces were not making the most of these musical masterpieces,” said Mary Probst, immediate past president, The Schubert Club Board of Directors. “The newly designed space will allow us to display many more historic pieces, so that the public can see and appreciate the rich musical legacy we’ve been able to preserve.”
The expanded museum – which will gain 1,000 square feet – will also be interactive. Visitors can play replicas of keyboard instruments specially commissioned by The Schubert Club.
“It will be exciting to bring a quality, modern museum experience into a grand historic space like the Landmark Center,” said George Reid, vice president, Museum of Musical Instruments and Manuscripts. “The combined and reorganized exhibits will truly bring this collection to life.”
The additional space and enhanced experience will fulfill another goal of The Schubert Club – to host large groups at the museum, such as school classes.
“In the past, we have only been able to accommodate groups of five to 10 people at a time, which limited our educational outreach to larger group tours,” said Diane Gorder, president, The Schubert Club Board of Directors. “This expansion creates a complete, enriching experience for music lovers of all ages.”
Visitors will be able to tour the museum on their own or be led by docents through the sequential exhibits, beginning with keyboard evolution and continuing to music boxes and phonographs, Franz Schubert and the Austrian “lieder” and recital traditions, composer manuscripts, and experimental instruments.
The Schubert Club opened the museum, first known as the Keyboard Instrument Collection, in the lower level of Landmark Center in 1980. Four years later, Bill and Ida Kugler donated a massive collection of world instruments, and Gilman Ordway contributed more than 60 letters from composers, spanning the alphabet from Beethoven to Wagner.
The museum commissioned Indonesian gamelan instruments from Java in 1995 for the Kugler Collection, and added its second-level gallery in Landmark Center for the growing Gilman Ordway Manuscript Collection in 2004.
In 2008, nearly 7,000 visitors from 44 states and 20 countries toured the museum, which is free to the public.
The project will be managed by Exhibits Development Group, St. Paul, with design consultation by the firms Xibitz, based in Milwaukee, Wis., and Lord Cultural Resources of Toronto, Ont.
The museum’s second-floor gallery will close at the beginning of June for summer-long preparations in what will become the new museum. While crews work on mechanical upgrades, flooring and lighting, offsite construction of the exhibits will begin in July for installation in October. The lower-level gallery will remain open to visitors through the summer months. A grand re-opening celebration is planned for November 2009.
About The Schubert Club
Founded in 1882, The Schubert Club is Minnesota’s oldest performing arts organization. As one of the country’s few recital-presenting institutions, it maintains a highly regarded national and international reputation among leading classical music performers. Its Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser International Artists Series has brought Jascha Heifetz, Arthur Rubinstein, Cecilia Bartoli, Isaac Stern, Beverly Sills and Yo-Yo Ma, among many others, to the Twin Cities to perform in recital for sold-out audiences.
The Schubert Club’s programs include the Early Music Series, the Hill House Parlor Concerts, Keyboard Conversations® with Jeffrey Siegel, the Courtroom Concert Series, the Museum of Musical Instruments and Manuscripts, and various educational outreach and scholarship programs.
The Schubert Club is a member of the Arts Partnership, programming a vibrant future for the performing arts in downtown St. Paul together with The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, the Minnesota Opera and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
The organization’s Web site is www.schubert.org.
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