The 30,000-square-foot space, which comes complete with a 200-seat theater, essentially functions as a hands-on gallery: Visitors who weren't taken with the mix on Beck's “Gamma Ray," a single from his recent album Modern Guilt, can remaster it at one station, while others can rap along with Jermaine Dupri at another.
Guests are immediately whisked to the fourth floor, where they're greeted with an 18-foot touch-screen table that looks and feels like something out of a James Bond movie. There, they can put on headphones and scroll through genres -- tap “outlaw country," for instance, and a Waylon Jennings song plays.
“We get you in here, we get you engaged and hopefully get you intrigued and listening to stuff you haven't listened to before," said chief curator Ken Viste. “Hopefully you'll be listening to stuff you know and love in new ways."
The museum does have a more traditional collection of historic items as well. There are guitars used by Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, as well as shards from one destroyed by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. There's also the barely there green Versace gown Jennifer Lopez wore to the 2000 Grammy Awards ceremony.
Straddling genres
But those pieces are vastly outnumbered by technology-centric stations, some of which are designed to educate visitors about music from different eras and regions across the country. Touch-screen maps of the United States enable users to click on a city and a decade and hear an array of artists -- for instance, select Chicago in 1990 and on comes noise rockers the Jesus Lizard.
The displays provide broad and entertaining overviews of American music. This is not a building simply for awards and history buffs.
