I recently attended an Al Stewart and Dave Nachmanoff concert at the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in north Scottsdale. (Aside: Al and Dave are brilliant guitar players and polished singer/songwriters who not only craft songs with several-hundred-word vocabularies, they’re also wickedly funny in between songs. Come for the music, stay for the comedy.) It was one of the best intimate concerts I’ve ever seen. The MIM theater is acoustically damned near perfect, as far as I can tell. The MIM itself boggled my little mind – but I’ll get back to that.
Right now, I’m going to indulge in a bittersweet compare-and-contrast session.
First off, let me establish that I do not trust any culture or creed that attempts to outlaw music, dance, and adornment. These are basic human activities, possibly hardwired into our brains. I suspect that to deny them is to deny other parts of our humanity, as well: little things like justice, mercy, empathy, and creativity.
Second, this is also a completely amateur analysis of two Arizona cities: Glendale and Scottsdale.
I lived in Glendale for ten years. While there, I rediscovered fiber art and beads, in part due to some amazing local bead shops. Even when I moved away to another nearby city, I tried to make time to go visit the best hidden bead treasure of them all.
The Bead Museum was founded in 1986 by Gabrielle Liese, and moved from Prescott, AZ down to Glendale in 1999. The museum rented an 8,000 square-foot building from the City of Glendale, and featured an extensive research library, almost 12,000 beads and beaded objects spanning 20,000 years of human history, and offered unique classes, exhibits, and guest lectures. I always compared it to two other gems of the Southwest: the Heard Museum in Phoenix AZ, and the International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe NM. (At the latter place, in 1985, my love of beadwork and book arts was rekindled as ‘This is something I could do’, not just ‘This is something I like to see’.)
Even in the best economic conditions, the Bead Museum could not get strong local advertising to break out of its niche market. The culture scene of Glendale had made a nod toward the same art-walks and festivals popularized by other local cities, but traffic congestion and lack of parking seemed to keep many potential patrons from attending – even me, when I lived only six miles away.
Beginning around 2003, the City of Glendale gambled on future tax revenues and issued $155.2 million in revenue bonds to pay for a sports complex for the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes; a $200 million Spring Training baseball stadium for the L.A. Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox; and nearby office, residential, and shopping centers. At least one of the latter projects was not even finished before it was repossessed by the lender. Other planned projects were shelved when the recession hit. The owner of the Coyotes sought bankruptcy in 2009. The NHL purchased the team, and Glendale agreed to pay to keep it in Arizona. The Coyotes games have never brought in the promised tax revenue and ticket returns. The City of Glendale is now stuck with over $300 million in payments to the NHL. Additional debts nearly crippled the city, resulting in massive layoffs and service cut-backs. The city’s bond rating was cut by S & P in December 2012 to A-. (1)
Theoretically, the improvements to downtown Glendale and the nearby sports complex should have led to increased support for the arts, but that didn’t happen. In the case of the Bead Museum, attendance dropped steadily. In spite of desperate and creative fundraising efforts, the lack of a relatively tiny $200,000+ endowment fund spelled the end, and the museum closed in March of 2011. (2)
Comments in the Arizona Republic summed up both the museum supporters’ heartbreak and the reaction of the general public:
‘Glendale can pour millions into the Coyotes, but can’t save a lousy museum that adds a little class to downtown?’
‘Beads (and beaders) are boring.’
After that, the comment chain descended to predictable mentions of porn and politics. (3)
Although the Bead Museum left Arizona, its complete collection was donated to the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, where it remains as an accessible resource for scholars and artists. (4)
The art geek in me cannot help but take a little bitter pleasure in seeing jocks and their business backers so humbled, even though I actually like the Coyotes.
Now consider Scottsdale. It has a mixed reputation: fossil bed for snowbirds, retirees, and social conservatives; vibrant and lucrative art destination; binge-drinking party central for the young and ultra-hip. But another thing Scottsdale has is serious money, even in the depths of recession.
I first heard about the Musical Instrument Museum from someone working on the project, while I was a customer service rep at a local art store. I remember being skeptical: small theme museums go into bankruptcy auctions all the time, and I didn’t know the scale of this project. I was impressed by the publicity when it opened in April of 2010. Living almost 40 miles away, I didn’t have a chance to visit until last weekend.
The architecture, scale, and depth of the project are stunning: a 200,000 square foot visual poem in white marble and blond sandstone, on a 20-acre site in the Sonoran Desert setting of north Scottsdale. A former Target executive helped fund the initial stages, and the rest has been privately funded through individual and corporate donations of over $250 million dollars. The concert theater draws a wide variety of performers, and has even been used in recording sessions. The two cafes feature locally-sourced dishes created by award-winning chefs. The vast exhibits themselves showcase musical instruments, dance costumes, and other artifacts from nearly every continent and culture, with unobtrusive narration from headsets and flat-panel displays throughout. At $18 per adult, attendance can be pricey, but it’s worth an entire day to visit.
From the MIM’s own website, I chose this quote to describe it: Music is something all humans share, a source of beauty and comfort, a means to give voice to joy in times of celebration, and a powerful force that brings people together. (5)
Scottsdale got the MIM. Glendale lost the Bead Museum. In the end – in either case – it’s no surprise why.