National Music Museum hopes to start renovations soon

Yahoo

14-05-2025

VERMILLION, S.D. (KELO) – The National Music Museum is looking forward to start renovations on the second floor as soon as possible. However, that's not until it gets more funding for the project.
'We'd like to start tomorrow as a matter of fact, but we're not quite ready for that because we need you to have a few more donations in the bank to make sure that we can have pretty good faith that the next year we can pay for the rest of it,' Director of the National Music Museum, Dwight Vaught said.
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In 2023, the museum debuted its newly renovated first floor. Now, about $4 million is needed to start renovations on the upper level.
'When we got the gift from Sanford of $1 million, it was a real catalyst to say, 'yes, we're going to do this.' And it's an incentive for other donors that to come forward and say, 'yes, we want to be a part of this,' and we want to help the museum to complete the second floor,' Vaught said.Vaught says each instrument on display tells a story, as the museum would like to continue that work with new exhibits. Upstairs blueprints currently line the hallway with what will come.
'The Italian strings gallery will be up there. Some of the brass collection will be up there,' Vaught said. 'Instruments as innovation where we're talking about some of the experimental or testing that they did for musical instruments and which ones caught on and which ones didn't.'One piece that was on display for a short time earlier this year was this gourd fiddle from the 1860s that symbolizes the Underground Railroad.
It's instruments with a rich background that attracted graduate student Adele Benoit.
'I really love being around these instruments that have stories. I swear they have souls. And it's really wonderful to to be able to engage with the instruments, to play them a little bit,' Benoit said. 'One of the things that I love about this museum is that it started off as a private collection. And so I think it's really a wonderful thing that kind of connects this museum to the community.'Currently the museum's conservator, along with grad students, are working to repair this keyboard.
'Every single instrument is going on display has to go through my hands, because obviously people who come to the museum, we want the instruments to look as nice as they can for the people who are going to come to it,' NMM conservator and coordinator of graduate studies Darryl Martin said.
'It's very nice to get the opportunity to repair old instruments, to get to know them, learn how the inside looks like, what's the whole construction of the instrument is like to have more knowledge in the building of new instruments,' graduate student, Gijs Clement said.
As the museum also allows students to explore the anatomy of many different pieces.
'The instruments are amazing. Like you have something made out of wood or any other material, which, in the hands of a musician, comes to life and tells a story which is a great thing to witness,' Clement said.
As the love for music is what brings people to see what's inside.'Everyone is going to find something if they're interested in the instrument that appeals to them. My personal favorite instrument is one of the jazz guitars. There's something special about it. There's a photograph of the person who originally played it behind the instrument and so on. But everyone, I think, can find something about an instrument that attracts them in a way that they probably can't explain,' Martin said.
The gourd fiddle is also featured in the United States 250 historic objects from across the country. The items chosen for this collection are ones that tell the story of America.
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