Grainger Museum
Being there
A small but fascinating autobiographical museum on the university's western side. Documents the life and times of Percy Grainger, a Victorian concert pianist who achieved international fame and success. In addition to the Grainger collection, there is a broad variety of items relating to music.
The story
The Grainger Museum is a repository of items documenting the life, career and music of the composer, folklorist, educator and pianist Percy Grainger (b. Melbourne, 1882; d. White Plains, New York, 1961), located in the grounds of the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
In the early 1920s, Grainger began to develop an idea for an autobiographical museum so that "all very intimate letters or notes should be deposited in an Australian Grainger Museum, preferably in birth-town Melbourne". Grainger was a linguistic purist, advocating for the use of a 'Blue-Eyed English' derived from Anglo-Saxon and Germanic glossary. As a result, he generally used the word 'past-hoard-house' for museums, but agreed to the word 'museum' in this case.