Inside of the Reece Museum is a collection of four organs, a player piano and keyboards from the history of the university in an exhibit called “Sustained Melodies”.
The ten pianos and organs shown were chosen from the music collection downstairs, and two of the ten are the highlights of the exhibit. They include a piano donated to the museum by Louise Goff Reece, who was the wife of the museum’s namesake, and a player piano which, at the time, could be compared to a karaoke machine today.
Also included in the exhibit are associated artifacts such as tuners, receipt books, player rolls and a phonograph that still works and can be played today. There is a deep history behind each of the pianos in the exhibit on how they got to the Reece Museum or a backstory of them before they were donated.
One piano lost its legs during the Civil War while it was being stored in a train depot with too much salt, and another came to the museum with misplaced and upside-down paneling. It was restored by the staff at the museum.
One pump organ came to ETSU all the way from Austria during World War II. A former professor at Quillen College of Medicine fled Nazi Germany and his pump organ found a home at the museum years later.
Exhibition Coordinator at the Reece Museum, Spenser Brenner, is passionate about every exhibit and artifact that is showcased or kept at the museum.
While “Sustained Melodies” closes Friday, Louise Goff Reece’s piano is always kept on display upstairs, and a virtual walkthrough of the exhibit will be uploaded to YouTube for those who could not come to see it in person.
Brenner made a comment on this exhibit, explaining why it is so important to him.
“We take great pride anytime we are able to curate an exhibit completely from artifacts we keep downstairs.”
That is exactly what they did with “Sustained Melodies”, and they will continue to do so at the museum in the future.
You must be logged in to post a comment.