Magazines - Tribal Art Spring 2011

By Manuel Jordán, Africanist art historian and independent scholar in Miami.

Introduction
The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) was inaugurated in April 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona, with the goal of representing the rich and diverse musical traditions of the world through a comprehensive collection of musical instruments. With “music is the language of the soul” as a guiding adage, the objective of representing and preserving the world’s musical heritage takes on a “live” human dimension. Beyond the display, a significant amount of effort was made to make music (and performance) part of the visitor’s experience.
The museum was designed by Richard Varda in conjunction with the Minneapolis/Phoenix firm RSP Architects. The building reflects a harmonious balance between structure and environment, organically blending into the Arizona desert landscape and mirroring natural forms in some of its design features and space layouts. The two-story, 192,000-square-foot museum houses 75,000 square feet of gallery/exhibition space. The sec- ond floor includes most of the musical instrument collection that is on display, divided into five geographic regions, including Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States and Canada, and Europe.