Celebrating the Art of Musical-Instrument Making

Victor-Charles Mahillon was the driving force behind the Musée d&s;organographie musicale of the Mahillon Company – a musical instrument manufactory known for their high-quality wind instruments. The history of that collection tells us about the views of an influential late nineteenth-century European maker-collector-curator towards the value of musical-instruments heritage. In 1883, it was incorporated into the Brussels Conservatoire museum, of which Mahillon became the first director in 1877. His action for putting musical instruments on the same level as classical works of art, preserved in the same way, in a public museum, is a tribute to his own profession of musical instrument maker.