Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day September 21, 2019, 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Admission: Free with a downloadable Museum Day ticket
Click here to download your ticket
Musical Performances in the Mansion’s Rotunda:
The Serendipity Chorale – 2:00 p.m.
The Suffragist Choir of the Unitarian Church of Westport – 3:00 p.m.
The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum will open its doors for free for Museum Day ticket holders on Saturday, Sept. 21, as part of Smithsonian magazine’s 15th annual Museum Day, a national event in which participating museums emulate the free admission policy at the Smithsonian Institution’s Washington, D.C.-based museums.
Museum Day represents a nationwide commitment to access, equity and inclusion. Over 450,000 tickets were downloaded for last year’s event, and Museum Day 2019 is expected to attract more museumgoers than ever.
This year, Museum Day will celebrate the Smithsonian Year of Music, an institution-wide initiative celebrating the Smithsonian’s vast musical collections and resources through 365 days of music-related programming. The Smithsonian Year of Music crosses disciplines, bringing together music-related resources in art, history, culture, science and education.
LMMM will display several 19th and early 20th century music boxes and phonographs in its Music Room drawn from the permanent collection. These musical machines, produced regionally as well as in several European countries, will include, among others, an Orchestral Cylinder Music Box with bells, miniature drum and wood block, ca. 1880; a Graphophone Type B, ca. 1897; and a Victor Phonograph Type B and the first to use a 78 RPM record, ca. 1904. Choral music will be performed in the Mansion’s Rotunda by The Serendipity Chorale and The Suffragist Choir of the Unitarian Church of Westport.
Visitors will learn that the simpler music boxes, which are precursors of the record player, were mass-produced and available to the general public for $10 to $20. Museum Day ticket holders will also be able to view the museum’s exhibition, “From Corsets to Suffrage: Victorian Women Trailblazers,” sponsored in part by CT Humanities.
