What it means
The MIM is the Musical Instrument Museum, and in Scottsdale it comes up in two kinds of sentences. The first is about guests: “Your parents are in town? Take them to the MIM.” The second is about weather: when it is 115 outside and the pool is too hot to enjoy, the MIM is the air-conditioned afternoon nobody regrets. The article is part of the name, the way it is with “the 101.”
What they are recommending is a museum of the world’s instruments rather than the history of the orchestra: drums, lutes, gongs, fiddles and electric guitars arranged by region, with wireless headsets that play the music of each display as you approach it. It sits just inside Phoenix near Kierland and the 101, so close to Scottsdale that hotel concierges file it with the local attractions. The museums and attractions guide ranks it among the three best indoor outings in the area.
Where you’ll meet it
On every rainy-day and hot-day list, in the summer playbook, in things to do for visitors with a car, and on concert calendars, where the MIM Music Theater books touring acts into a hall with fewer than 300 seats. The live music guide covers the rest of the scene.
Where the word came from
The museum is the project of Robert J. Ulrich, known as Bob, the former chief executive and chairman of Target Corporation. By the usual account, he and his friend Marc Felix developed the idea after visiting the musical instrument museum in Brussels, Belgium. Ulrich’s version was deliberately global: the museum says it set out to show the instruments people play every day around the world, rather than the historic Western classical instruments most such collections favor.
It opened in April 2010 on Mayo Boulevard, a street better known locally for the Mayo Clinic hospital a mile or so east. The building covers about 200,000 square feet on two floors and cost more than $250 million, and at opening it was described as the largest museum of its type in the world. The collection now runs past 15,000 instruments and associated objects from nearly 200 countries and territories.
The initials came with the brand. The museum calls itself MIM, its concert hall is the MIM Music Theater, and its trademarked tagline is “The World’s Only Global Musical Instrument Museum.” Locals took the short form and added “the,” which is how the Valley treats any proper noun it uses often.
What it is not
It is not in Scottsdale, whatever the hotel brochure implies; the address is Phoenix. It is not a music hall of fame, though the Artist Gallery has instruments linked to famous players. And it is not the Brussels museum that inspired it, which has its own claim on the initials.
The fine print
The visit has a structure worth knowing. The geographic galleries upstairs, organized by world region, are the heart of the place and where most of the hours go. The Experience Gallery downstairs lets visitors touch and play a changing array of instruments from many cultures, and it is the room children remember. The Artist Gallery shows items connected to well-known musicians and innovators; exhibits have featured Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Taylor Swift. The 299-seat theater runs concerts mostly after the galleries close.
The numbers vary by what is counted. Wikipedia counts more than 15,000 instruments and associated objects in the collection; the museum’s own about page cites more than 7,500 instruments from more than 200 countries and territories, so the two figures are evidently counting different things. Either way, the collection is too large for one visit, and the museum is built to reward repeat trips.
For Scottsdale the MIM fills a gap. The city’s own museum shelf is short: Western Spirit and SMoCA are excellent and small. The MIM, with the Heard Museum and the Desert Botanical Garden, is one of the Phoenix institutions that Scottsdale borrows for its visitors and its own long summers.