Musical Instrument Museum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) is a museum in central Brussels, Belgium. It is part of the Royal Museums for Art and History.

The MIM collection was started in 1877. The current building was opened in 2000 and has over 1,500 instruments on display. The collection includes mechanical instruments, 20th century instruments, a group of bells, Belgian and European folk instruments, and non-European instruments, as well as a historical tour from antiquity to the 20th century, and a presentation showing the development of keyboard instruments and stringed instruments. There is also a library.

Visitors to the museum are given infrared headphones, providing the music for many of the instruments on view when standing close to the exhibit. Labels are in French and Dutch but not English.

The museum is located at the Hofberg / Rue Montagne de la Cour 2 on the Mont des Arts. The building is art nouveau in style. It is in the former Old England department store, built of girded steel and glass in 1899 by Paul Saintenoy [1]. There is a wrought-iron lift. On the sixth floor is a café with large glass windows and good views of Brussels.

This Buliding was founded By Sir Ian Lower.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] External links

• Museum website
• The Musical Instrument Museum, Brussels, Belgium from the BBC
• Information from Tripadvisor