National Musical Museum, South Dakota

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Zachary Woolfe, Plucking the Strings in an Unlikely Eden. New York Times, Sept 3, 2015.
www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/arts/ ... n-south-dakota.html

Note:
(a) "the cello believed to be the oldest in the world, the nearly 500-year-old instrument * * * The Amati 'King' cello * * * The King cello lives in Vermillion, a city of 10,692 in the southeastern corner of South Dakota. Its residence there is the National Music Museum, which is on the University of South Dakota’s campus"
(i)
(A) Despite the name, the Museum is not related to the federal government. See National Music Museum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Music_Museum
(was founded as a partnership between The University of South Dakota, which provides staff and facilities for preservation, teaching, and research, and the Board of Trustees of the NMM, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation that is responsible for acquisitions, public exhibiting, and programming)
(B) The Museum was founded in 1973, with some 2,500 instruments and a vast collection of printed material from Arne B Larson (a music teacher at a public school in South Dakota, and a local conductor for (music) bands).
(C) Arne (name)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_(name)
(from the old Norse word for "eagle" – arni)
(D) For pronunciation, see Arne (last name): “Thomas Augustine 1710–1778 Eng. composer”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arne
(ii)
(A) Home to the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota, is a city where Vermilion River empties into Missouri River.
(B) Vermillion, South Dakota, United States. Encyclopaedia Britannica, undated
www.britannica.com/place/Vermillion
("Its [The city's] name is derived from the river, which in turn comes from the red (vermilion) clay along the river’s banks")

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(b) the collection of National Musical Museum: “precious early Italian strings; one of only two surviving bass saxophones made by their inventor, Adolphe Saxe; a portable 17th-century organ with hand-operated bellows; a Gibson Les Paul guitar with a shimmering gold finish; a radiant Javanese gamelan.”
(i) string (n): "3b(1): plural   the stringed instruments of an orchestra"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/string
(ii) bass saxophone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_saxophone
("was the first type of saxophone presented to the public" by [Belgian] Adolphe Sax at an exhibition in Brussels in 1841)
(iii) “a portable 17th-century organ with hand-operated bellows”

Chest Organ, ca 1620. NMM, undated
orgs.usd.edu/nmm/abell4.html
(“NMM 4031. Chest organ by Johannes Jacob Hannss, northern Germany, ca. 1620. Engraved on a square tin pipe: Joh / Jacob / Hannss / C. Single manual (45 keys; short octave), hand-operated bellows. Six stops; 390 pipes. Eventually discarded in Germany, such instruments were retained in Poland and similar areas where economic conditions were not as favorable. Rawlins Fund, 1986”)
(iv) Gibson Les Paul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Les_Paul
(v) gamelan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamelan
(section 1 Terminology)

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(c) About NMM. “ ‘It is the connoisseur’s dream collection’ * * * Italian violins, or German harmonicas, or Asian zithers * * * the oldest surviving playable harpsichord (Naples, circa 1530).”
(i) harmonica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonica
([German] Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann is often cited as the inventor of the harmonica in 1821)
(ii) zither
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zither
(The word zither is a German rendering of the Latin word cithara, from which the modern word guitar is also derive)

(d) “Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, founded in 2010 by Robert J Ulrich, the former chairman of Target.  It cost $250 million to build the Phoenix museum, which has a large, intriguing collection less distinguished than the National Music Museum’s. By contrast, the Vermillion expansion is projected at just $17 million.”

Musical Instrument Museum (Phoenix)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_Instrument_Museum_(Phoenix)

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(e) “The National Music Museum originated with a single man, Arne B Larson (1904-88), a beloved band director in Brookings, SD, who was also a voracious collector. Looking for a place to deposit the more than 2,500 instruments he had accumulated, he settled on the university in Vermillion. If things had stopped there, the museum — called the Shrine to Music to complement the Shrine of Democracy, as Mount Rushmore’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, called his presidential heads — would be an inviting local institution.  But it became far more than that. Arne’s son André [P is middle initial; PhD West Virginia University] * * * founded the museum and spent his career leading it * * * In 1984 he persuaded the philanthropists Robert and Marjorie Rawlins to donate $3 million to purchase the Witten Family Collection * * * Among the Witten highlights were three instruments built by the pathbreaking Italian maker Andrea Amati [1505-1577]: a violin, a viola and the King cello. * * * Originally made with three strings rather than its current four and somewhat cut down in size by a luthier at the turn of the 19th century, this cello is the earliest bass instrument of the violin family believed to survive. Around 1560, 20 years or so after its construction, it was painted to become part of a set — an early string orchestra — for the French court of Charles IX. The gilded ‘K’ in the center rib on each side stands for his Latin name, Karolus.”
(i) Brookings, South Dakota
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings,_South_Dakota
(the fourth largest city in South Dakota, with a population of 22,056 at the 2010 census; home to South Dakota State University; Wilmot Wood Brookings)
(ii) Gutzon Borglum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutzon_Borglum
(John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum; 1867 – 1941; born in Idaho by Danish immigrants; Mount Rushmore project, 1927–1941)
(iii) Robert Rawlins (born in South Dakota; in California worked for Hewlett Packard 1956-1962; became a venture capitalist thereafter)
(iv) Currently a violin, a viola and a cello all have four strings.
(v) luthier (n; French [noun masculine] luth lute (from Middle French lut): "one who makes stringed musical instruments (as violins or guitars)"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/luthier
(vi) “this cello is the earliest bass instrument of the violin family believed to survive”
(A) Refer back to (a), both of which  talk about the same King cello--”King” thanks to the French connection, to King Charles IX.
(B) bass (instrument)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_(instrument)
(vii) Charles IX of France
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_IX_of_France
(1550-1574; King of France 1560-1574)
(viii) The King Violoncello by Andrea Amati, Cremona, Mid-16th Century. National Music Museum, undated.
orgs.usd.edu/nmm/Cellos/Amati/Amaticello.html
(A) cello
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello
(or violoncello; section 1 Etymology: the name "violoncello" contained both the augmentative "-one" ("big") and the diminutive "-cello" ("little"))
(B) Italian English dictionary
* violoncello (noun masculine; violone +‎ -cello): “violoncello”
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/violoncello
  ^ violone (noun masculine; viola + -one augmentative suffix): “(music) violone”
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/violone
  ^  -cello (suffix)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-cello
(C) The Web page refers to “bass side” and “treble side” of the cello.
* treble (n; Middle English, the highest part in a three-part composition, from treble, adjective):
"the highest voice part in harmonic music :  SOPRANO"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/treble
* Christopher Smit, Glossary of Terms [in piano]. The Piano Deconstructed (name of Smit’s website), undated
www.piano.christophersmit.com/glossary.html

Quote:

"Bass Leg - supporting leg on the bass (left) end of the keyboard

"Treble Leg - the supporting leg on the right (treble) side of the keyboard
(ix) At last we return to the quotation in (e). In particular: “The gilded ‘K’ in the center rib on each side stands for his Latin name, Karolus.”

rib (disambiguation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rib_(disambiguation)
(may refer to: "The sides of a violin or a guitar")

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(f) "Cleveland T Johnson, the director since 2012 * * * Mr Johnson said. 'I look out across the front courtyard, and I see people coming up to the front door. It’s been on their bucket list"
(i) Cleveland T Johnson: DPhil (in music) Oxford University; BMus Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, Ohio; was dean of the DePauw University's School of Music.  Johnson succeeded André Larson.
(ii) DePauw University
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DePauw_University
(in Greencastle [~ 40 miles west of Indianapolis], Indiana; private, has a Methodist heritage; renamed in honor of Washington C. DePauw, who made a sequence of substantial donations)

* former vice president Dan Quayle: JD Indiana University 1974, BA political science DePauw University 1969
(iii) bucket list (n; from the phrase kick the bucket to die; First Known Use 2006): "a list of things that one has not done before but wants to do before dying "
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bucket list