vMUSEUM continued from page 23 urban centers?’ At the same time, I’m incredibly delighted and privileged that I can be here, and I’m hoping that I continue to help make the museum be far well more known, and not a surprise to anyone anymore,” she said. “I don’t want this to be the best kept secret in the region, or anywhere; I want it to be as well known as it deserves to be.” Patricia describes the National Music Museum as “one of the coolest museums that I’ve been to, because of the magnitude of the collection, and the choice and level of artifacts is unique. This is truly one of the great museums of its kind in the world. It’s at the top in its genre. In addition to that, the people who work here are experts, and working with them, for me, is such a great thrill.” Patricia’s professional background includes a stint as a literature educator, and work in the field of public relations. She has a PhD in comparative literature. “I’ve either done writing or studied writing for most of my career,” she said, “whether it was academic, or private sector, or public sector. I love words.” Patricia is fluent in German and Spanish, and is working on mastering Mandarin Chinese. “I went into corporate public relations for a long, long time, and you always hope that wherever you work, you’re going to work with really interesting people,” she said. “I love to learn from the people I work with, and they have a stellar staff here, with some of the world’s authorities on the subjects of musical instruments and music. I learn something new every day – it’s no cliché, and I’m humbled by what I don’t know. You could never know enough about musical instruments … it’s fun every day.” Just before her first visit to the museum, Patricia was concerned that it could be an overblown attraction designed mainly to lure in tourists driving through the state. “It was the opposite – it exceeded my expectations by so much. The authenticity of the place is 100 percent. You don’t have to love music – you just have to be interested and curious in everything from history to art, to science and technology, and popular culture,” she said. “Or, you can be a music expert, in which case this place is a necessary pilgrimage. We have people who come here from across the world to pay homage to some of the greatest musical artifacts ever constructed. “I think almost everybody who comes in here is very surprised,” Patricia said. “Part of my job is to mitigate against that possibility that some people may not know this is a truly great museum, that it’s not just an attraction along the road.” Patricia is thrilled that the New York Times profiled the National Music Museum last fall. The article describes how the NMM’s galleries teem with masterpieces: precious early Italian strings; one of only two surviving bass saxophones made by their inventor, Adolphe Saxe; a portable 17th-century organ with hand-operated bellows; a Gibson Les Paul guitar with a shimmering gold finish; a radiant Javanese gamelan. “Surrounded by such treasures, a visitor finds it apt that the museum was, from its founding in 1973 until 2002, called the Shrine to Music,” Zachary Woolfe wrote in his September 2015 piece for the Times. Woolfe’s article also describes the museum’s unique history, telling the story of how it originated with a single man, Arne B. Larson (1904-88), a beloved band director in Brookings, who was also a voracious collector. Looking for a place to deposit the more than 2,500 instruments he had accumulated, he settled on the university in Vermillion. If things had stopped there, the museum -- called the Shrine to Music to complement the Shrine of Democracy, as Mount Rushmore’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, called his presidential heads -- would be an inviting local institution. But it became far more than that, Woolfe wrote, describing how Arne’s son André, born in 1942, followed in his father’s footsteps, earning a doctorate in musicology and inheriting his passion for collecting. He founded the museum and spent his career leading it, diversifying the holdings and adding well over 10,000 instruments by courting donors and fostering relationships with dealers. In 1984 he persuaded the philanthropists Robert and Marjorie Rawlins to donate $3 million to purchase the Witten Family Collection of early Italian strings, thought to be the vMUSEUM continued on page 27 Floors & More (formerly Floor To Ceiling) Your Total Home Design Center Interest Free Financing 1205 Broadway Ave., Yankton • 665-9728 ry window, Monday-Friday 9-5:30, Saturday 9-3 for eve Style son. a om, every se 10% Off Your Entire every ro Shutters • Blinds • Shades Hunter Douglas Purchase Call Today For A Complimentary Consultation with Kara HERVOICEvJULY/AUGUST 2016v25