Nashville is getting a new museum, the first anywhere to showcase the full spectrum of African influence in music genres that have come to be American, including gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, hip-hop and more.
The museum, whose board members include a range of musicians including India.Arie and CeCe Winans, will have galleries devoted to different streams of music as well as a research center with extensive databases and media library, as well as performance spaces.
Museum organizers began working on the project twenty years ago, but were never able to find enough money to open what is described as a ‘low-profit museum.’ The picture changed when developers started looking for a ‘cultural anchor’ for a large-scale project that’s replacing the city’s old and since-replaced Convention Center.
The under-construction project surrounds the 56,000-sq-ft museum with a 32-story apartment building, a 25-story office tower, an H&M store, a large food court and 225,000 square feet of retail with 2,100 parking spaces, and more. Oh, and there will be signs to help you find the museum in all of that.
