Introductory note
A project of this magnitude requires continuous and periodic updates, modifications and improvements. The Directory is not yet complete in its international coverage; not all collections are properly described, and for a few, we have not been able to locate the current address, so material is being added as work progresses. Museums, collectors, and users are invited to report any inaccuracies and send their updates to g.di.stefano (at) rijksmuseum.nl.

The file is provided for download in .xlsx (Excel) format.

> Download the International Directory

CIMCIM International Directory: A History
The CIMCIM International Directory of Musical Instrument Collections was originally conceived under the chairmanship of Countess Geneviève de Chambure and the secretariat of Jean Jenkins. The latter edited the first published edition of the Directory, which appeared in 1977 (Jenkins 1997). This initial version served as a checklist of institutional and private collections of instruments from Europe, Africa, and Asia. North American collections were originally excluded from the project because, in 1974, a Survey of Musical Instrument Collections in the United States and Canada had already been published by the American Musical Instrument Society. Consequently, it was decided to omit North America from the Directory to avoid redundancy.

During the 1988 annual meeting in Berlin, CIMCIM established a Working Group to update the Directory. In the early 1990s, the list of potential collections to be included grew to around 1,500 (Barclay 1992). Most information was gathered with assistance from Working Group members (Barclay 1995, 2). As the data was continually changing, the group determined that the most flexible medium for publication was the web. In 1996, the CIMCIM Executive Board agreed that material gathered by the International Directory Working Group would be published on the CIMCIM website in stages as editing progressed (Myers 1996, 4).

In 1997, twenty years after the first edition’s release, the second revised edition of the International Directory, edited by Barbara Lambert, became available online (Myers 1997). CIMCIM committee members were also asked to recommend colleagues who could assist in gathering data from underrepresented geographical areas, particularly in Asia (Lambert 1997, 2).

After a few years of inactivity, the International Directory Working Group reconvened in 2005 during the CIMCIM meeting in Michaelstein, with Ken Moore appointed as the new project coordinator (Moore 2005). Additionally, the Working Group proposed redesigning and updating the Directory’s platform. The revision was to be carried out by local groups, preferably coordinated by a museum or institution responsible for verifying museum data, including web pages and email contacts. In 2007, the updated International Directory became accessible through the CIMCIM website in a new searchable database that replaced the previous format. Data from several hundred collections in 109 countries was revised and updated to include information regarding web pages, new contact numbers, and recent bibliographic references (Moore 2007, 2).

In 2009, a new procedure for updating the Directory was announced during the CIMCIM General Assembly in Florence. Each museum and collection was to assume responsibility for revising and updating their details after requesting a personal ID and password from the CIMCIM secretary (Torp 2011, 2; Strauchen 2012, 6). However, following the redesign of the new institutional CIMCIM website, the Directory – which had again become partly obsolete –was removed from the web.

The Current Project
In 2018, after several years of inactivity, it was decided to include a new revised edition of the Directory on the updated CIMCIM website. To this end, the CIMCIM Board appointed Giovanni Paolo Di Stefano to coordinate the revision project. In 2020, the Board conducted a feasibility study for the update. In January 2021, the data was recovered from CIMCIM’s obsolete electronic database with assistance from Stephen Stead of ICOM CIDOC. In May 2021, the CIMCIM Board launched a call and appointed three research assistants (Fanny Guillame-Castel, Judith Kemp, and Arianna Rigamonti) to help update the Directory and collect data from missing countries (Di Stefano 2021). The data gathering was mostly based on information available online (for example, the list of music museums on the AMIS website and Wikipedia, featuring approximately 1,000 collections from 61 countries), as well as other databases (such as MIMO, MINIM, MIZ) and bibliographic sources. Noteworthy among these is the long list published in the entry ‘Instruments, collection of’ edited by Barbara Lambert and Albert Rice for the 2001 edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Lambert – Rice 2001), later updated in 2014 by Laurence Libin and Arnold Myers for the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (Libin – Myers 2014). The latter lists 107 countries and approximately 950 collections. A slightly longer list (about 1,150 collections) is included in SIGLA, the extensive list of acronyms used for identifying musical instrument collections prepared by Arnold Myers for the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (also available in an updated version on the CIMCIM website). This process enabled the documentation of over 2,800 collections which include musical instruments (almost a thousand more than in previous editions). While all continents are represented, the quantity of documented collections in Africa, South and Central America, and Oceania is expected to increase as new information becomes available.

In May 2022, CIMCIM launched a call for volunteers to form a team of national and/or regional representatives for the project. These representatives are CIMCIM members with a strong knowledge of music collections and museums in their territories (whether a single country or larger geographic areas spanning multiple countries). National and/or regional representatives were invited to assist the International Directory team in reviewing and/or collecting data and serve as liaison officers between the team and the included museums and collections (Di Stefano 2022, 24–25).

Currently, the list of museums and collections is available in a downloadable Excel file from this webpage. Collections are alphabetically listed by country and city. Temporary exhibitions are not included. All known collections featuring at least one relevant musical instrument will be represented, regardless of the number of specimens. Our definition of a musical instrument follows traditional understanding: any sound-producing device from any culture, activated in any way, that is used for creating what is commonly referred to as “music”. This includes automatic or mechanical instruments but excludes collections that consist solely of recording or playback equipment. The criterion for inclusion in the Directory is accessibility. However, a small number of collections that do not accept visitors are listed to document particularly significant instruments. Each entry includes the collection’s name, address, contact details, and (when possible) the number of exemplars, a brief description, the website, and a link to the online database (Di Stefano – Stead 2024).

Working team
International Directory team: Giovanni Paolo Di Stefano (chair), Fanny Guillame-Castel (research assistant), Arianna Rigamonti (research assistant).

National representatives:
Alla Bayramova (Azerbaijan), Antje Becker (Germany), Cristina Bordas (Spain), Anna Borg Cardona (Malta), Stewart Carter (USA and China), Ignace De Keyser (Belgium), Giovanni Paolo Di Stefano (Italy, The Netherlands, and General Coordinator), Jean-Philippe Échard (France), Goran Grahn (Sweden), Bengü Gün (Turkey), Kathrin Menzel (Switzerland), Eugenia Mitroulia (Greece), Jesse Moffatt (Canada), Isabel Muenzner (Switzerland), Marie Martens (Denmark), Jimena Palacios (Mexico), Paula Olabarrieta (Argentina), Carolina Ovejero (Argentina), Marisa Ruiz Magaldi (Spain), Moctar Sanfo (Burkina Faso), Pablo Alejandro Suárez Marrero (Mexico), Tereza Žůrková (Czech Republic), Giovanni Ver Mellstreing (Paraguay), Vilma Vilūnaitė (Lithuania), Anna Wang (China), Vilena Vrbanic (Croatia).

References
Barclay, Bob. 1992. “Report on ICOM 1992, Quebec City.” CIMCIM Bulletin 12 (November): 1–5.
Barclay, Bob. 1995. “Report on the International Directory.” CIMCIM Bulletin 14 (March): 2.
Di Stefano, Giovanni Paolo. 2021. “An update about the revision of the International Directory of Museums and Collections of Musical Instruments.” CIMCIM Bulletin (December): 7–8.
Di Stefano, Giovanni Paolo. 2022. “More on the CIMCIM’s International Directory of Musical Instrument Collections.” CIMCIM Bulletin (August): 24–25.
Di Stefano, Giovanni Paolo – Stead, Stephen. 2024. “CIMCIM’s Directory: History and Future.” In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of ICOM-CIMCIM, Prague 20-28 Agosto 2022, forthcoming.
Jenkins, Jean (edited by). 1977. International Directory of Musical Instrument Collections, Buren: Knuf.
Lambert, Barbara. 1997. “Reports of Working Groups.” CIMCIM Bulletin 33 (October): 1–2.
Lambert, Barbara – Rice, Albert. 2001. “Instruments, collection of.” In New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, sub vocem, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Moore, Ken. 2005. “International Directory.” CIMCIM Bulletin 59 (July): 2.
Moore, Ken. 2007. “New International Directory of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections on Line.” CIMCIM Bulletin 63 (November): 1–2.
Myers, Arnold. 1996. “International Directory of Musical Instrument Collections.” CIMCIM Bulletin 29, (October): 4.
Myers, Arnold. 1997. “Reports of Working Groups.” CIMCIM Bulletin 32 (June): 3.
Libin, Laurence – Myers, Arnold. 2014. “Instruments, collection of.’ In Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, edited by Laurence Libin, sub vocem, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Strauchen, Bradley. 2012. “Minutes of the CIMCIM General Assembly.” CIMCIM Bulletin, no. 1 (October): 5–6.
Torp, Lisbet. 2011. “President’s Annual Report as given at the General Assembly in Brussels on September 1, 2011.” CIMCIM Bulletin, no. 2 (October): 1–2.

Updated on October 2024