The MFA Boston's musical instrument collection

The MFA Boston's musical instrument collection is one of its most distinctive holdings — the collection now numbers roughly 1,460 instruments, gathered from cultures and eras spanning the globe. It includes many European and American examples, as well as numerous pieces from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, and ranges from an ancient Greek trumpet to a modern lap steel guitar, and from earthenware panpipes to a complex Indonesian gamelan. The founding gift of around 560 instruments came to the museum in 1917. Recent programming has featured everything from a 1796 Broadwood grand piano and an American bass viol made in Milton, Massachusetts, around 1800, to global instruments like the charango, steel pan, yaylı tanbur, and dumbek, reflecting the museum's effort to present music as an art form deeply woven into cultural history rather than a side note to painting and sculpture.