Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2001 - Present
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum at 222 Fifth Avenue South in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Its mission is to document the history of country music and to honor its major figures. Within the building lies the Hall of Fame itself, which consists of plaques honoring the most famous of country and western music-related personalities as designated by the Country Music Association (CMA).
In 1961, the CMA announced the creation of the Country Music Hall of Fame. The first three inductees, Jimmie Rodgers, Fred Rose and Hank Williams, were announced at a CMA banquet in November. Bronze plaques, with the facial likeness and a thumbnail biography of each new member, were cast in bas relief. They were unveiled on the Grand Ole Opry by Ernest Tubb. These plaques, and those for subsequent Hall of Fame inductees, were displayed in the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville until 1967.
In 1963, the CMA announced that a Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum was to be built on Music Row in Nashville. In that same year, Tennessee chartered the Country Music Foundation (CMF) as a nonprofit, educational organization to operate the museum.
1967 - 2000
The original Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum opened on Music Row (Music Square East and Division Street) on April 1, 1967. Operations of the museum came to include educational programs, the CMF Press and CMF Records, the Country Music Foundation Library (1968), and the historic sites RCA Studio B (1977) and Hatch Show Print (1986). The Music Row location of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum was closed December 31, 2000. The building was later razed and a private parking lot for employees of music licensing firm BMI now occupies the site. Before they went on to become major stars in the country music recording industry, Kathy Mattea and Trisha Yearwood worked as tour guides at the Music Row museum.
On May 17, 2001, the CMF held the grand opening of its new $37,000,000 facility ten blocks away in downtown Nashville. Featured exhibits include "Sing Me Back Home: A Journey through Country Music", with a collection of original recordings, instruments, costumes, photographs, et cetera, as well as the Hall of Fame Rotunda, which displays the plaques of all the inductees to the Country Music Hall of Fame. An intimate concert venue, the Ford Theatre, is also located within the building.
The new building's exterior is laced with symbolic images. The most obvious of these are the windows that look like the black keys of a piano. More conspicuous images include the diamond-shaped radio mast, which is a miniaturized replica of the WSM tower located a few miles south of Nashville. The round discs surrounding the tower symbolize the different size records and CDs country music has been recorded upon. When viewed from the air [1], the building is in the shape of a bass clef. The north-west corner of the building juts out like the tail fin of a '57 Chevy.
Many have commented the museum is facing the wrong direction. The museum's artistic front side faces toward the downtown area, while only the blank rear side of the building is visible to any skyline-viewers. Architects claim the building was meant to face downtown so visitors would be able to view the historic Ryman Auditorium, longtime home of the Grand Ole Opry, from the glass-encased lobby. Ironically, a large high-rise hotel has since been built between the museum and the Ryman, thereby obstructing the view.
