National Music Museum

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The National Music Museum, "America's Shrine to Music," is a music-oriented museum in Vermillion, South Dakota, USA. It was founded in 1973 on the campus of the University of South Dakota, as the National Music Museum & Center for Study of the History of Musical Instruments. The Museum is fully accredited by the American Association of Museums and is recognized as "A Landmark of American Music" by the National Music Council.

In the 1930s, Arne Larson began the instrument collection, and donated his entire collection to the Museum when it was established. The Museum's renowned collections, which include more than 10,500 American, European, and non-Western instruments from all cultures and historical periods, are among the world's most inclusive. They include many of the earliest, best preserved, and historically most important instruments known to survive. The Museum's rise to world-class status has attracted international attention, and each year the Museum attracts thousands of visitors from all 50 states and around the world.

In April 2007, the Museum outbid New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art at a Christie's auction in acquiring a rare English cittern dating from the late 1500s, "This instrument is extremely rare, probably the only English cittern from the Renaissance known to survive," Museum Director Andre Larson said. "We already have an Italian cittern from the same period, but it's one of two or three that have survived."[1]