TheRose Museum is a smallmuseum dedicated to the history ofCarnegie Hall inManhattan, New York City. The museum, which opened in 1991, is located at 154 West57th Street, on the second floor of Carnegie Hall. It was funded by the Susan and Elihu Rose Foundation and includes more than 2,500 feet of archives and more than a century of concert programs. The plan when the museum opened was to supplement its permanent collection with a series of rotating exhibits.[1] The museum also focuses on the Hall's uncertain future following the development ofLincoln Center and the sale of Carnegie Hall in the late 1950s[2] leading to the preservation campaign spearheaded byIsaac Stern. The government purchased the hall in 1960 and the building was declared aNational Historic Landmark in 1962.[3][4]
The museum's collection includes a number of items of interest to music lovers: a program from theVienna Philharmonic's debut concert on March 28, 1842, an autographed program from the Beatles' shows, a ring owned byBeethoven, a pair ofJohannes Brahms's eyeglasses, one ofRichard Strauss's notebooks, which contained sketches ofDanube, an unfinished poem as well as one ofBenny Goodman's clarinets and batons used by Leonard Bernstein and Arturo Toscanini.[5][6] It also includes a sequinned jacket owned and worn byJudy Garland and thetrowel used in laying thecornerstone of Carnegie Hall.[5][2][1][7]
Additional items from Carnegie Hall's history are held in theCarnegie Hall Archives, housed in a former studio. Those materials complement that in the museum's collection and are sometimes used for museum exhibitions.[8][9]
