Explore Fifty Years of Collections at the NMM’s Center for Preservation and Research

A ribbon cutting and open house is planned this month to help celebrate the National Music Museum’s 50th anniversary at the NMM’s Center for Preservation and Research. Live music, refreshments and guided tours of the facility will be offered. The free event will be held on Thursday, May 18, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. at the NMM’s Center for Preservation and Research, located at 1225 Carr Street in Vermillion, SD (next to Polaris along Hwy 50 bypass).

Completed in 2019 through a partnership with the Vermillion Chamber and Development Corporation, the National Music Museum’s Center for Preservation and Research provides a secure, environmentally safe home for the museum’s vast collections.

Currently, the Center holds thousands of musical instruments and related artifacts while work on the NMM’s permanent exhibitions continues. Once work in the museum’s original Carnegie building on the campus of the University of South Dakota is complete, many of the instruments will be returned to be displayed, while others will remain in the Center for Preservation and Research to be studied, stored and shared by NMM curators, visiting scholars and students.

The 23,000 square ft. facility not only provides a dedicated, dynamic space for research and discovery, but also contains a conservation and photography lab for the ongoing preservation and visual recording (and sharing) of the NMM’s collections.

The National Music Museum is currently open to the public for the special exhibition “As Good As Gold: The First 50 Years” Wednesdays - Fridays from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., and on Saturdays from Noon – 4 p.m. Work on the permanent exhibition continues, with seven first floor galleries slated to open to the public in August, 2023.

About the National Music Museum
 The National Music Museum (NMM), located on the campus of the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, is one of the world’s finest collections of musical instruments, with some 15,000 instruments in its holdings. The NMM owns some of the most historically significant musical instruments in existence. Founded in 1973, the National Music Museum Inc. is a non-profit entity in partnership with USD.