Starting next week, visitors to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will see a lot more of Taylor Swift.
A new exhibition, Taylor Swift: Speak Now — Treasures From the World Tour, will open at the museum June 6 and run through Nov. 4, featuring costumes, instruments, props and set pieces from the country/pop superstar's 2011-2012 Speak Now world tour. The exhibit opens as country fans stream into downtown Nashville for the CMA Music Festival, which runs June 7-10.
Museum director Kyle Young says the Swift exhibition is potentially the first in a series of short-run exhibitions that the museum would open over summer months in years to come.
"Taylor is at the forefront of what's going on now in music, and we strive to be relevant," Young says. "This lends itself to a large exhibition, simply because of how elaborate the tour itself was."
Swift's new exhibit comes on the heels of the museum's May 17 announcement that she has pledged $4 million — the largest monetary donation by an artist in the museum's history — to fund a new 7,500-square-foot education center at the museum. The new Taylor Swift Education Center will serve five to six times its current number of guests, offering three classrooms and a state-of-the-art children's exhibit gallery spread over two floors.
Young says the exhibition isn't connected to Swift's donation; it simply grew out of their conversations. Dedicating an exhibition of this size to a contemporary subject is a new move for the museum, which reported that 38% of its visitors in 2011 were 34 and under.
The exhibition was assembled by the museum's curatorial staff and will re-create 10 scenes from the Speak Now production. Among the dozens of pieces featured are nine of Swift's stage outfits; stage instruments including guitars, banjo and ukulele; and the "Juliet Balcony" that Swift used to "fly" over audiences during concerts.
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