National Museum of African American Music


The National Museum of African American Music is a museum scheduled to open in Nashville, Tennessee on Labor Day Weekend 2020. It is expected to showcase musical genres inspired, created, or influenced by African-Americans. Its location at Fifth + Broadway in Downtown Nashville as opposed to Jefferson Street has been controversial.

Collection

The museum will comprise "five permanent themed galleries" as well as "a 200-seat theater and traveling exhibits". Its founding curator, Dr. Dina Bennett, was appointed in May 2018.
The museum is expected to showcase more than fifty musical genres that were inspired, created, or influenced by African American culture, ranging from early American religious music to hip-hop and Rhythm and Blues. Its collection will include up to 1,400 artifacts, including clothes worn by Nat King Cole, Dorothy Dandridge, Whitney Houston, and Lisa Lopes. The first traveling exhibit is expected to be about the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

Donations

The museum received $500,000 from the Regions Foundation and $500,000 from the Mike Curb Foundation in February 2019.

Location

The museum was initially supposed to be built at the intersection of Rosa Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street, the historic center of the city's African-American community. After the location was changed to Downtown Nashville in 2016, the staff of the Tennessee Tribune, Nashville's African-American newspaper, explained:
The museum will be located at Fifth + Broadway in Downtown Nashville, where the Nashville Convention Center once stood. The new complex, which is expected to cost $450 million, is being developed by OliverMcMillan and Spectrum | Emery, a company owned by businessman Pat Emery.
The location, close to Broadway and the Ryman Auditorium, was praised by Senator Marsha Blackburn at a fundraising event in February 2019. Mayor David Briley added, "For Nashville to get past its history of racism and to start to move to an era where African-Americans both know and can tell their own history in our city, we have to invest in this museum."