Brigade Calendar

1. The Musée du Louvre or Louvre Museum, Paris, France
   
   
2. The Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy
   
   
3. National Museum of Australia, Canberra
   
   
4. The British Museum, London, UK
   
   
5. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
   
   
6. National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C., USA
   
   
7. State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia


8. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA


9. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain


10. Victoria Memorial Museum, Kolkata, India


11. Experience Music Project (EMP) Museum, Seattle, USA


12. Centre for Indian Music Experience (IME), Bangalore, India

The Musée du Louvre or Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Photo credit: © Bogdan | Dreamstime.com

One of France's most famous landmarks, the Louvre holds the distinction of being not only one of the world's largest museums, but also the most visited art museum of them all. It houses 35,000 works of art—dating from pre-history to the 19th century—that are displayed in over 60,000 square meters of exhibition space. (The three most visited pieces of art, judged by popular consensus, seem to be the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory.) As of 2008, the collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.

The Louvre was once a small fortress, built by Philip II in the 12th century. Over time, the original structure was extended to become the Louvre Palace, home to Francois I and Louis XIV. In 1692, when Louis shifted the royal residence to Versailles the Louvre became a place to display the royal collections. It became a national museum during the French Revolution, on the orders of the National Assembly. It was officially opened on 10 August 1793, the first anniversary of the monarchy's demise. The public was given free access on three days per week, which was "perceived as a major accomplishment and was generally appreciated".

The Louvre comprises three wings—the Richelieu, the Sully, and the Denon—arranged like a horseshoe. Nestled between these, in the middle of the main court, is the iconic La Pyramide Inversée. The Pyramid was built between 1983-1989, as part of a massive renovation project awarded to architect I.M. Pei. The second phase of the Grand Louvre plan, La Pyramide Inversée (The Inverted Pyramid), was completed in 1993.

For the trivia buffs: The Louvre entered popular culture with the phenomenal success of the book The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 film based on the book. It is believed that the museum earned $2.5 million by allowing filming in its galleries.

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The Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy

Photo credit: Jesús Moreno, available under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The Vatican Museums are a complex of different pontifical museums and galleries displaying collections built up by the Roman Catholic Church through the centuries. The massive 5.5 hectare complex consists of two palaces joined by two long galleries, divided into 54 'salas' or sub-galleries. Together, these contain some of the world's most important works of art, dating from antiquity to masterpieces of modern religious art. (The last sala within the museum might be one of the most famous places in the world: the Sistine Chapel, with its barrel-vaulted ceiling covered by Michelangelo's frescos.)

The collections of the Vatican Museums include extraordinary treasures like the Sobieski Room and the Room of the Immaculate Conception; the Raphael Stanze and the Loggia, which were decorated by order of Julius II and Leo X (1513-1521); the Chapel of Nicholas V (1447-1455), painted by Fra Angelico; the Borgia Apartment, where Pope Alexander VI lived until his death (1492-1503); the Gallery of Tapestries, a collection of various 15th and 17th century tapestries … the list is endless.

The Vatican Museums are part of the Vatican Palace—located within the world's smallest sovereign state, Vatican City. The Vatican Palace, residence of the popes since 1377, is made up of a number of individual buildings, which together contain an estimated 1,400 rooms, chapels, and galleries. The pope and his household occupy only a small part of the palace—the rest is given over to the Vatican Library and Museums.

The popes were among the first sovereigns who opened their private art collections to the public. The Vatican Museums originated as a group of sculptures collected by Pope Julius II (1503-1513) in the early 16th century. The process of establishing different pontifical museums and galleries began under the patronage of the popes Clement XIV (1769-1774) and Pius VI (1775-1799), who set up the first major curatorial section. The museums have been enlarged by successive pontiffs.

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National Museum of Australia, Canberra

Photo credit: George Serras, NMA
Flyleaf Photo credit: John Gollings, NMA.

The National Museum of Australia, opened in 2001, is a social history museum that interprets the country's history by exploring the key people, events, and issues that shaped the nation. Using contemporary exhibition techniques, the museum covers 50,000 years of Indigenous heritage, settlement since 1788 and events as varied as Federation and the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It also develops and travels exhibitions on subjects ranging from bushrangers to surf lifesaving. The Museum's Centre for Historical Research, with a cross-disciplinary approach to history, makes the museum a lively forum for ideas and debate about Australia's past, present and future. Incidentally, the Museum has an international reputation in outreach programming, particularly with regional communities, due to its innovative use of new technologies.

The museum is housed in a truly spectacular building; a remarkable combination of different shapes, elements, colours and ideas. The building allows for 6600 sqm of exhibition space and is made up of several individual spaces put together like the pieces of a puzzle Ashton Raggatt McDougall, architect of the museum, is said to have been inspired by the idea of "a jigsaw puzzle that expresses the many tangled stories which make up Australia's history". An uninhibited use of colour—crimson, orange, bronze, gold, black and brushed silver—is another defining feature of the museum: . A range of textures adds to the vividness. Some of the raised dimples and sunken holes are words written in braille.

At the heart of the facility is the Garden of Australian Dreams: providing a protected outdoor courtyard. A concrete surface depicts a highly coloured, stylised 'map' of the area; each step is the equivalent of 100 kilometres. The words on the undulating surface of the map identify place and country; the criss-crossing lines across the map include surveyors' reference marks, road maps, the dingo fence, and Indigenous nation and language boundaries. The word 'home' is repeated in 100 different languages.

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The British Museum, London, UK

Photo credit: Eric Pouhier, available under Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The British Museum has its origins in the will of a physician, naturalist and collector, Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Wanting his legacy—more than 71,000 objects—preserved intact after his death, Sloane bequeathed the whole collection to King George II for the nation. The gift was accepted and on 7 June 1753, an Act of Parliament established the British Museum.

The museum was first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. It was the first national public museum in the world and granted free admission to all 'studious and curious persons'. Except for the period covered by the two World Wars, the Museum has remained open ever since its inception, gradually increasing its opening hours and moving from an attendance of 5,000 per year to the staggering 6 million of today.

The rapid expansion of the British Empire was reflected, exponentially, within the museum. Today the massive Greco-Victorian building (its facade resembles a great temple) that houses the British Museum comprises almost 100 galleries holding more than seven million objects from every continent in the world. Ten curatorial and research departments look after the museum's collections.

Together, the collections of the British Museum form one of the most comprehensive documentations of human history, from its beginnings to present time, and include treasures like the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, the Nereid monument and the remains of the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos. Some objects in the collection—the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon or the Sivapuram Nataraja from India for example—are the objects of heated controversy, with their countries of origin demanding restitution.

An architectural highlight of the museum is the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court designed by Foster and Partners and opened in 2000. This two-acre space, enclosed by a spectacular glass roof, connects all the surrounding galleries and is the largest enclosed public space in Europe. The world-famous Reading Room is at its centre. The revered Reading Room has a blue-and-gold dome and hosts temporary exhibitions.

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Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain

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Picturesquely located on the Nervión River, the Guggenheim Museum has made waves as much for its spectacular design as its value as a repository of postmodern and contemporary art. When it opened in 1997, it was hailed as the most important building of its time (a view endorsed by architecture experts in the World Architecture Survey 2010).

The magnificent museum building—made of glass, limestone and covered with 30,000 sheets of titanium—was designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry. It features an atrium rising to over 150 feet in height, which connects to the museums 19 galleries by a system of suspended metal walkways and glass elevators. Vertical windows provide dazzling views.

The Guggenheim Bilbao's collections offer a comprehensive overview of the visual arts from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, with an emphasis on post-war painting and sculpture in America and Europe. The collection includes more than 250 works, including those of some of the most significant artists of the second half of the 20th century, such as Eduardo Chillida, Yves Klein, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Clyfford Still, Antoni Tàpies, and Andy Warhol. The museum features work by modern and contemporary Basque and Spanish artists in order to preserve and bring global attention to their vital cultural heritage.

One of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Guggenheim Bilbao is an example of an excellent concept: individual collections existing within a shared network so as to foster cultural exchange and exhibit to the widest possible audience. The permanent Guggenheim collections are made up of works belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, works acquired through the programme of commissions at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and the Guggenheim Bilbao's own collection.

Trivia: The building was featured in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough and Rajinikanth's Sivaji: The Boss (in the song sequence Style, composed by A.R. Rahman). —Source: Wikipedia.

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National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C., USA

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Established in 1976, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum (NASM) is the second most visited museum in the USA, with the world's biggest collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft. The museum tells the story of aviation from the earliest human attempts at flight to supersonic jets and spacecraft. It is also a center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics. Here you will find everything from the world's first airplane to the backup hardware for the latest robot spacecraft dispatched to explore another world.

The museum has two display facilities. The two sites together showcase the largest collection of aviation and space artifacts in the world. The first is at the National Mall building in Washington, D.C. This facility has 22 exhibition galleries (whose collection includes the original Wright 1903 Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Apollo 11 command module, and a 4-billion-year-old slice of moon rock collected by Apollo 17 astronauts that visitors can touch), the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, flight simulators, a three-level Museum shop, and a food-court-style restaurant. Docent tours, daily free educational programs, and school group tours and activities are also available.

The second facility—the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport—is a companion facility. Opened in 2003, the Center displays thousands of aviation and space artifacts, including the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay and Space Shuttle Enterprise. Also on display are many aircraft and spacecraft previously stored at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, MD, where restoration work on NASM's collections is carried out. The Center also offers the Airbus IMAX Theater; flight simulators; food service; a museum store; free docent tours; and daily educational programmes.

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State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia

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One of the largest and oldest museums in the world, the Hermitage was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great. Once the private art collection of the tsars, the Hermitage was opened to the public in 1852 and houses more than three million works of art and artifacts. Today's Hermitage is one of the world's richest repositories of art; it was continually enlarged with tsarist treasures and acquisitions, all later confiscated and nationalized, along with numerous private collections, by the Soviet government after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

Amongst these are paintings, works of graphic and applied arts, sculptures, archaeological finds and numismatic material. These treasures are spread across over 400 galleries and gilded salons in a large complex of six historic buildings. These include the magnificent Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors; the buildings of the Small, Old (Great) and New Hermitages; the Hermitage Theatre and the Auxiliary House. The museum complex also contains the Menshikov Palace and the Eastern Wing of the General Staff building, the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Centre and the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad.

The Hermitage has been described as "virtually wallpapered with celebrated paintings: Leonardo's Benois Madonna, Rembrandt's Danaë. Matisse's The Dance …" In addition, the walls are works of art themselves, being housed, as they are, in the lavish Winter Palace, one of the most outstanding examples of Russian baroque magnificence. One of the most prized sections of the Hermitage is the Treasure Gallery, also referred to as the Zolotaya Kladovaya (Golden Room), with its spectacular collection of royal jewels.

Yet another addition, the New Hermitage, was built between 1839 and 1852 under Catherine's grandson, Nicholas I; it became Russia's first public museum, although admission was by royal invitation only until 1866. Its facade is particularly striking, with 10 male figures cut from monolithic gray granite supporting the portico.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

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Known colloquially as The Met, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's great art centers. The museum is said to have received 5.68 million visitors in 2010-2011, making it the most popular tourist site in New York City.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's earliest roots date back to 1866 in Paris, France, when a group of Americans agreed to create a "national institution and gallery of art" to bring art and art education to the American people. The Museum opened to the public at its current site on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street in 1880. A branch of the Museum—the Cloisters Museum and Gardens—was opened in northern Manhattan in 1938. It is devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe.

Today, the Museum's two-million-square-foot building houses over two million objects, tens of thousands of which are on view in more than four hundred numbered galleries across the Met's two display facilities. Several temporary exhibitions are on display at any given time. The Met's seventeen curatorial departments study, exhibit and preserve the museum's extensive collections.

It is said that "every category of art in every known medium from every part of the world during every epoch of recorded time is represented here and thus available for contemplation or study—not in isolation but in comparison with other times, other cultures, and other media." Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt (the largest collection of Egyptian art outside of Cairo), paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters (its 2500 European paintings are one of the greatest in the world) and an extensive holdings of American and modern art The Met also has large collections of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art and musical instruments, costumes, and antique weapons and armor from around the world.

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Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

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Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

Considered one of the most important art museums in the world, Spain's main art museum houses one of the world's best collections of European art (from the 12th century to early 19th century) and the best single collection of Spanish art.

The museum building was designed by architect Juan de Villanueva in 1785, on the orders of King Charles III. Its original purpose was to house the Natural History Cabinet; an intention that was over ruled by the monarch's grandson, King Ferdinand VII, encouraged by his wife Queen Maria Isabel de Braganza. Instead, it became a Royal Museum, eventually renamed Museo Nacional del Prado and opened to the public for the first time in November 1819.

The foundation of the museum's collections is the 'royal collection', comprising over 1,510 pictures from the various Royal Residences. The collection began to grow significantly in the 16th century, during the reign of Charles V and collections were significantly increased under succeeding Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs.

The Prado's collection currently comprises around 7,600 paintings, 1,000 sculptures, 4,800 prints and 8,200 drawings, in addition to a large number of works of art and historic documents. Amongst these are an impressive number of works by Velázquez, Francisco de Goya, Titian, Rubens and Bosch. The pride of place in the museum goes to Las Meninas by Velázquez, widely regarded as one of the most important paintings in Western art history. (Incidentally, Velázquez not only provided the Prado with his own works, but was also largely responsible for obtaining many great works of Italian masters.) More than 2,300 paintings have been incorporated into the Museum del Prado since its opening as well as a large number of sculptures, prints, drawings and works of art through bequests, donations and purchases.

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Victoria Memorial Museum, Kolkata, India

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On the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, Lord Curzon, then Viceroy of India, proposed the building of a memorial honouring "the success of the British Empire in India". He suggested that the most suitable memorial would be a "stately, spacious, monumental and grand building surrounded by an exquisite garden'. The cost of this memorial—rupees one crore plus—came from the "voluntary contributions' of the princes and people of India.

Sir William Emerson, President of the British Institute of Architects, designed the massive Indo-Saracenic style building Lord Redesdale and Sir David Prain designed the gardens, which sprawl across 64 acres. King George V, then the Prince of Wales, laid the foundation stone on January 4, 1906 and it was formally opened to the public in 1921.

The Victoria Memorial is a historical museum and India's largest repository for a visual history of Calcutta. It contains a major collection of paintings, sculptures, arms and armour, lithographs, aquatints, dioramas, rare books and manuscripts. The Royal Gallery houses a remarkable collection of memorabilia relating to Queen Victoria and the British presence in India: paintings depicting scenes of Queen Victoria receiving the sacrament at her coronation in the Westminster Abbey; the christening of the Prince of Wales in Windsor Castle (1842); the entry of Prince Wales into Jaipur; the Queen's pianoforte, writing desk and chair. The Calcutta Gallery—India's first city gallery, visualised by Lord Curzon—covers the history and development of Calcutta from Job Charnok and the British rule upto 1911, when the capital was shifted to Delhi. The gallery also has a life size diorama of the view of the Chitpur road in the late 19th century.

After India independence in 1947, the Victoria Memorial's collections were expanded to include the National Leader's Gallery, featuring portraits and relics relating to Indian independence.

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Experience Music Project (EMP) Museum, Seattle, USA

Photo credit: © Seattle Photographs

Dramatically set against the backdrop of the Seattle Center—adjacent to the Space Needle and the Seattle Center Monorail, which runs through the building—the EMP Museum is a spectacular 140,000-square-foot complex dedicated to the history and exploration of popular music. The EMP was started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000,

The structure was designed by architect Frank Gehry (he also designed the Guggenheim, Bilbao), who is said to have been inspired by electric guitars in creating the building's curvy metallic design, intended to symbolise the energy and fluidity of music. A fusion of textures and colors, the exterior consists of stainless steel and painted aluminum shingles, each individually cut and shaped. The stainless steel has three finishes: mirrored purple, lightly brushed silver, and bead-blasted gold. The red and blue sections are painted aluminum. Each finish takes on a unique shade when viewed from different angles around the building.

The museum includes rock memorabilia, rare artifacts from popular music history, technology-intensive multimedia displays, multiple innovative galleries, an interactive Sound Lab and a 'Sky Church'—a concert venue with state-of-the-art sound and lighting and the largest indoor LED screen in the world. Seattle's music history is presented in two permanent exhibitions: "Northwest Passage" features instruments, costumes, concert photos and testimonials that highlight defining moments and artists; "Sound and Vision" is a collection of videotaped oral histories. The Guitar Gallery is dedicated to the history of the guitar. The massive sculpture entitled Roots and Branches is made largely out of musical instruments, especially guitars, which are played by electronically controlled devices.

EMP's interactive space has 12 mini-studios. The Sound Lab allows museum-goers to learn the basics of playing various instruments and On Stage features a simulated onstage experience. Visitors can also record a CD of their musical efforts in the Jam Studio. Visitor experience is further enriched through special programmes, interactive exhibitions and interpretive exhibits.

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Centre for Indian Music Experience (IME),
Bangalore, India

Brigade Group is proud to be supporting the creation of India's first Experiential Music Museum.

The Centre for Indian Music Experience is intended to be a vibrant music epicenter through which people can rediscover their connections to the living tradition that is Indian music. Due to open in 2013, the IME is bringing together the best experts and expertise to create exhibits, learning activities and performances that engage, educate and entertain.

The IME is different from a traditional museum. While a traditional 'collection based' museum encapsulates the idea that a museum's value lies in its collections, an experiential museum represents the idea that the visitor is central and the museum's role is that of a catalyst in an intensely personal and transformational experience.

A meaningful appreciation and understanding of various genres of Indian music will be facilitated through interactive exhibits with multi-media galleries featuring photographs, instrument installations, audio-visuals, and interactive experiential areas; a sound garden to introduce visitors to the principles of sound, with installations made of natural materials; and a learning centre to promote music education and appreciation, with areas for classes, seminars and workshops.

The museum, currently under construction, will be housed in a unique 50,000 sft building designed by Bangalore architects Architecture Paradigm. International exhibit planners Gallagher & Associates—leading designers of entertainment venues, museums and visitor centers in the U.S.—are designing the experiential aspect of the museum. Eminent persons involved with the project include Shubha Mudgal (renowned musician); Dr Shibha Chaudhuri (ethnomusicologist and archivist); Sriram Parsuram (musician and scholar); V. Sriram (author) and Naresh Fernandes (journalist). The IME is located alongside the MLR Convention Centre, with its state-of-the-art auditorium—a popular venue for the performing arts and a multitude of cultural events in South Bangalore.

For more on the IME, please visit indianmusicexperience.org

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