Mercer Museum

Located in Bucks County, PA, Mercer Museum and Fonthill Castle are historic castles celebrating the legacy of Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930), American archaeologist, anthropologist, ceramicist and scholar.

The Mercer Museum, one of Bucks County’s premier tourist attractions, offers visitors a unique window into pre-Industrial America as seen through the implements used in everyday life. The Museum’s collection includes more than 50,000 objects exhibiting the tools of more than 60 different crafts and trades, and provides one of the world’s most comprehensive portraits of material culture in America.

The Mercer Museum is located at 84 South Pine Street in Doylestown and is open 6 days a week. For more schedule and admission information visit mercermuseum.org or call 215-345-0210.

Exhibits

Everyday Rhythms: Music at the Mercer
Special Exhibit Included with Museum Admission

In almost every place and in every time human beings have organized random sounds into something more meaningful and expressive – music. In addition to expressing ourselves, and entertaining each other, we have created, played and adapted instruments to send signals, tell stories, convey power, accompany rituals, organize work, sustain culture and tradition, and give order to community life. Drums and bells, for example, have been put to virtually all of these “social” uses at different times, and in different cultures.

Everyday Rhythms explores some of these common uses of music and musical instruments – shared across many regions, people and cultures. These instruments were once a part of the acoustic landscape – the soundscape – of everyday life around the globe. Instruments featured in the show include not only European-American forms, but also those from areas of Africa and Asia (acquired by museum founder Henry Mercer during collecting in the 1920s). Exhibit segments focus on the use of instruments for military purposes, for timekeeping and signaling, to accompany religious and secular rituals, and to help tell and pass on stories.

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