Ella and Percy Grainger inside the Grainger Museum, 1956.

Ella and Percy Grainger inside the Grainger Museum, 1956.

Percy Grainger stated that the Grainger Museum was intended to ‘preserve and display exhibits collected by me during the last 40 years’ including material about his personal and professional life, as well as the ‘many different aspects’ of other composers and their works. By contrast, the Music Museum would ‘preserve and exhibit things of general musical interest and things connected the general musical life of Australia’. Grainger sought out the musical collections of Professor Marshall-Hall, first Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne, as the first major acquisition for the Music Museum. After setting up the initial display for the Opening in 1938, Percy and Ella Grainger spent a further nine months at the Museum in 1955-56, working intensely to organise and enrich the exhibition contents.

Grainger Museum Collection

1956