The excitement for the upcoming opening of the Museum of Broadway is ramping up.
The highly-anticipated Museum will be the first permanent museum dedicated to the history and legendary artistry of Broadway. The Museum opens to the public on Nov. 15 and is located at 145 West 45th Street.
The Museum of Broadway is an immersive and interactive experience honoring monumental musicals, plays, and the people who create them. The works of designers, artists, and theatre historians are featured throughout the visitors’ journey along the timeline of Broadway, from its birth to present day, and to the future of Broadway.
Visitors can explore a visual history of Broadway, highlighting groundbreaking moments, spectacular costumes, props, renderings, rare photos, videos and more through a series of exhibits. Guests can also learn more about the pivotal shows that transformed Broadway, including moments that pushed creative boundaries, challenged social norms, and paved the way for those who would follow.
Overall, the Museum highlights more than 500 individual productions from the 1700s through the present, some of the exhibits and immersive experiences include The Phantom of The Opera, The Lion King, HAIR, The Ziegfeld Follies, Show Boat, Oklahoma!, The Wiz, and Rent, among many more.
The Museum also celebrates the behind-the-scenes of these iconic shows with “The Making of a Broadway Show” exhibit, which showcases the community of the talented professionals, both on and off stage, who bring beloved Broadway plays and musicals to life every night.
Special exhibits will be featured throughout the Museum, the first of which is The American Theatre as seen by Hirschfeld, curated by David Leopold, Creative Director of The Al Hirschfeld Foundation. The exhibit takes visitors through nine decades of Hirschfeld’s iconic images of theater through drawings and prints from 1928 to 2002. Visitors will also be able to sit in a replica of Hirschfeld’s barber chair, where he drew all the finished drawings in his career, as well as view a selection of sketchbooks that he used to record his initial impressions of shows in out-of-town tryouts and previews. Portraits of Meryl Streep, Julie Andrews, Stephen Sondheim, Liza Minnelli and John Leguizamo, many of them signed by their subjects, will also be on display, and visitors will have the chance to create a Hirschfeld portrait of themselves with a new app created exclusively for this exhibition. Hirschfeld coloring pages will be available to make the exhibition fun for visitors of all ages.
The Museum of Broadway is founded by entrepreneur and two-time Tony Award-winning producer, Julie Boardman, and founder of award-winning experiential agency Rubik Marketing, Diane Nicoletti, and features work from award-winning artists and designers from around the globe involved in productions such as Rent Live!, Hamilton, Beetlejuice, Moulin Rouge!, West Side Story and many more.
Tickets for The Museum of Broadway can be purchased at www.themuseumofbroadway.com/tickets. These timed tickets start at $39, and a portion of every ticket sold will be donated to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
