Experience Music Project

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View of the EMP from the Seattle Center with the monorail traveling through it.
View of the EMP from the Seattle Center with the monorail traveling through it.
Monorail tracks going through the EMP building.
Monorail tracks going through the EMP building.

The Experience Music Project (EMP) is a museum of music history founded by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, located on the campus of Seattle, Washington's Seattle Center. It is sited near the Space Needle and is by one of the two stops on the Seattle Center Monorail, which runs through the building. Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is located within the EMP building.[1] EMP has provided funding for radio station KEXP in partnership with the University of Washington.[2] EMP was also the site of the demo and concert program for the first international conference on New interfaces for musical expression, NIME-01 and the Pop Conference, an annual gathering of academic, critics, musicians and music buffs.

The museum contains mostly rock memorabilia and technology-intensive multimedia displays.

Contents

[edit] Architecture

Design by Frank Gehry
Design by Frank Gehry

The structure itself was designed by Frank Gehry, and resembles many of his firm's other works in its sheet-metal construction, such as Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Walt Disney Concert Hall and Gehry Tower. Much of the building material is exposed in the building's interior. The central "Sky Church" room pays homage to Jimi Hendrix and other rock 'n' roll icons using a 40-foot (12 m) high, 70-foot (21 m) wide video screen and an 18-panel montage of images.[3] The last structural steel beam to be put in place bears the signatures of all construction workers who were on site on the day it was erected. Hoffman Construction Company of Portland, Oregon was the general contractor.

Even before groundbreaking, the Seattle Weekly in discussing the design could refer to "the often quoted comparison to a smashed electric guitar"; indeed, Gehry himself had made the comparison: "We started collecting pictures of Stratocasters, bringing in guitar bodies, drawing on those shapes in developing our ideas."[4] The architecture was greeted by Seattle residents with a mixture of acclaim for Gehry and derision for this particular edifice. "Frank Gehry," remarked British-born, Seattle-based writer Jonathan Raban, "has created some wonderful buildings, like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, but his Seattle effort, the Experience Music Project, is not one of them."[5] New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp described it as "something that crawled out of the sea, rolled over, and died."[6] Forbes magazine called it one of the world's 10 ugliest buildings.[6] Others describe it as a "blob"[7] or call it "The Hemorrhoids".[5]

[edit] Collections

An exterior view of the building.
An exterior view of the building.

Permanent exhibits include the Northwest Passage which is a hall containing exhibits on the history of popular music in the Pacific Northwest. Exhibits include Bing Crosby (Tacoma, Washington), The Kingsmen (Portland, Oregon), Heart (Seattle, Washington), The Presidents of the United States of America (Seattle, Washington), Sir Mix-a-Lot (Bremerton, Washington), Nirvana (Aberdeen, Washington, via Seattle), and Pearl Jam (Seattle, Washington) . Also included are some less famous artists including Queensrÿche (Bellevue, Washington), and bands far more obscure, such as The Pudz (Seattle, Washington). Numerous video clips show interviews and performance footage, and extensive commentary and additional recordings are available via handheld computers.

There was an exhibit on Jimi Hendrix which was open from June 7, 2003 to August 5, 2007. There is also the Guitar Gallery, dedicated to the history of the guitar; a massive sculpture, Roots and Branches originally conceived by UK exhibit designer Neal Potter and developed by Trimpin made largely out of musical instruments, especially guitars, which are played by electronically controlled devices; the Sound Lab, in which museum-goers can learn the basics of playing various instruments; On Stage, a simulated onstage experience; and Costumes from the Vault, a collection of performers' costumes.[8]

E.M.P. introduced a travelling collection exhibit in 2002 entitled Disco: A Decade of Saturday Nights. It remained in Seattle, WA for one year, then in 2003 it moved to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI and in 2004 to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. It has since been retired.

[edit] Finances

USGS satellite image of the EMP in the shadow of the Space Needle.
USGS satellite image of the EMP in the shadow of the Space Needle.
Inside: the Sky Church.
Inside: the Sky Church.

The museum has not been a financial success.[9][10] In an effort to make ends meet, the "blue blob" at the south end of the museum — which originally housed the "Artist's Journey" exhibit, resembling an amusement park ride centering around an elaborate film of a Woodstock Jimi Hendrix performance — now houses the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

In an effort to raise more funds, museum organizers used Allen's extensive art collection to create a 2006 exhibit within the confines of the EMP.[11] The exhibit, which had nothing to do with either music or science fiction, was entitled DoubleTake: From Monet to Lichtenstein. The exhibit included Roy Lichtenstein's The Kiss (1962), Pierre-Auguste Renoir's The Reader (1877), Vincent van Gogh's Orchard with Peach Trees in Blossom (1888), Pablo Picasso's Four Bathers (1921) and several works of art from Claude Monet including one of the Water Lilies paintings (1919) and The Mula Palace (1908).[12]

A subsequent exhibit — Sound and Vision: Artists Tell Their Stories, which opened February 28, 2007 — had far more connection to the museums' missions. The first exhibit at the complex to bring together both music and science fiction in a single exhibit, Sound and Vision draws on EMP's and SFM's collections of oral history recordings.[13]

Beginning March 31, 2007, "after six years of criticism from some community members who felt that the cost of admission made the museum a tourist destination, rather than an educational and recreational resource for locals", the price of a combined admission to EMP and SFM have been cut to $15 for adults, and $12 for children and seniors; there will no longer be a separate admission to each of the two museums.[14]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Official Seattle Center map Seattle Center Map. Seattle Center. Retrieved on 2006-11-24. EMP, SFM and the Monorail station are numbers 18, 39, and 20, respectively, on the map, all near the corner of 5th Avenue N and Broad Street.
  2. ^ DeRoche, Jeff (April 12 – April 18, 2001). Radio Ga-Ga. The Stranger. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
  3. ^ Benedetti, Winda (2000-06-22). The Sky Church: A sanctuary for rock disciples. Seattle PI. Retrieved on 2007-06-19.
  4. ^ Roger Downey, Experience This!, Seattle Weekly, February 18, 1998. Accessed online 22 October 2006.
  5. ^ a b Raban, Jonathan (April 4, 2004). Deference to nature keeps Seattle from becoming world-class city]. Seattle Times. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
  6. ^ a b Barnett, Erica C. (June 17 – June 23, 2004). EMPty. The Stranger. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.
  7. ^ Cheek, Lawrence W. (September 26, 2006). On Architecture: Corrugated steel is a nice wrinkle. Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
  8. ^ Permanent Exhibits on EMP's official site. Accessed online 22 October 2006.
  9. ^ John Cook, Recent layoffs at local companies: Experience Music Project, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 8, 2002. Accessed online 22 October 2006.
  10. ^ Associated Press story, Experience Music Project still struggling five years later, USA Today, March 22, 2005. Accessed online 22 October 2006.
  11. ^ Sheila Farr, Paul Allen's Experience Art Project, Seattle Times, November 29, 2005. Accessed online 22 October 2006.
  12. ^ Full List of Works Announced for Upcoming DoubleTake: From Monet to Lichtenstein Exhibition, press release on the exhibit's official site, March 21, 2006. Accessed online 22 October 2006.
  13. ^ A Legacy of Sound and Vision: The EMP Oral History Program, EMP site. Accessed online 4 March 2007.
  14. ^ Haley Edwards, EMP and SFM slash their ticket price, Seattle Times, March 14, 2007. Accessed online 24 March 2007.

[edit] External links

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