Hollywood Bowl Museum

Don't come to the Bowl without stopping by the terrific and free Hollywood Bowl Museum! It's open every night before concerts - and daytime all year round.

New at the Bowl Museum: Soundscape – Hearing Music at the Hollywood Bowl

How can you “see” a sound wave? When you’re sitting somewhere in the middle or the top of the Bowl, why is there a delay between the sight of the conductor’s baton coming down and what you actually hear? How did people hear the music at the Bowl before microphones and speakers were used? Using hands-on exhibits developed in partnership with the Exploratorium in San Francisco, you will answer these questions for yourself in a highly interactive exhibition that is appealing and fun for all ages.

• Talk or sing into the Sound Spectrogram and see a moving picture of your voice
• Talk into an Echo Tube swooping 100 feet around the museum
• Play the Oscylinder Scope, which explores the nature of sound by directly translating the vibration pattern of musical strings into visible waves
• Manipulate sound waves with Visible Effects of the Invisible, where a speaker causes fluid in a tube to vibrate, creating geysers that respond to resonant frequency
• Place yourself anywhere in the Hollywood Bowl in a computer simulation demonstrating Speed of Sound
• Play the Musical Wall, and see how strings, winds, and percussion work

Continuing at the Bowl Museum: Hollywood Bowl - Music For Everyone

Albertina Rasch ballet, 1930 • Music Center Archives/Irish Collection

Taking its cue from a Bowl slogan from the 1950s, this exhibit at the Hollywood Bowl Museum is called Hollywood Bowl: Music For Everyone.

Program cover, 1930

It’s been true of the Bowl for a long time that people can find just about any kind of music they like. That’s part of the Bowl’s history and its success. Looking back at programs and photographs of the Bowl since its inception in the early 1920s, it’s clear that Music For Everyone is no platitude. While symphonic music formed the core of early Bowl presentations, there were early adventures in opera (a full house for the unamplified coloratura soprano of Amelita Galli-Curci), and modern dance (with works by pioneering choreographers such as Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, Norma Gould, Adolph Bolm, Agnes de Mille, and Lester Horton). Jazz was introduced to the Bowl in the thirties by Benny Goodman, followed in the forties by Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Lena Horne, and others, with a breakthrough concert in 1956 featuring Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Chubby Checker, Duane Eddy, and Frankie Avalon were among the first rockers to appear at the Bowl in the late fifties. Folk and world music concerts began as early as the 1920s with a Native American festival and have become a staple at the Bowl in the last ten years.

Korean Festival, 2007

This exhibit, on the main floor of the museum, is organized into sections on dance; pop, rock, jazz and world music; symphonic music and opera; architecture and history of the Bowl; and the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. Video screens are an integral part of the exhibit, allowing us to show hundreds of still photos and extensive film footage.

You are invited to visit the museum before concerts to enhance and enrich your Bowl experience. Admission is free.

Museum Resource Center

Second Floor Gallery:
The Museum Resource Center, the Hollywood Bowl Museum's own intranet site, covers the history and breadth of the Bowl through hundreds of photographs, audio and video samples, as well as past museum exhibits. There are three computer workstations open at all times during the museum's public hours. In addition, the museum's collections are available for study by appointment.