Rose Museum

The Rose Museum, located on the second floor of Manhattan's Carnegie Hall at 154 West 57th Street, is a small museum dedicated to the history of Carnegie Hall. The museum, which opened in 1991, was funded by the Susan and Elihu Rose Foundation and includes more than 2,500 feet of archives and more than a century of concert programs. The plan when the museum opened was to supplement its permanent collection with a series of rotating exhibits. The museum also focuses on the Hall's uncertain future following the growth of Lincoln Center and the sale of Carnegie Hall in the late 1950s leading to the campaign preservation spearheaded by Isaac Stern and New York City's purchase of the Hall in 1960 for a sum of $5 million as well as its being declared a National Historic Landmark in 1962.
Past exhibits have included: Tchaikovsky, in honor of his trip to New York City for the opening of Carnegie Hall; Marian Anderson, the first African American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera; George and Ira Gershwin, in honor of the centennial of George's birth; and one on Leonard Bernstein, among others. The museum's collection also includes a number of items of interest to music lovers: a program from the Vienna Philharmonic's debut concert on March 28, 1842, a ring owned by Beethoven, a pair of Johannes Brahms's eyeglasses, one of Richard Strauss's notebooks, which contained sketches of "Danube", an unfinished poem as well as one of Benny Goodman's clarinets and one of Toscanini's batons. It also includes a sequinned jacket owned and worn by Judy Garland and the trowel used in laying the cornerstone of Carnegie Hall.