Bob Dylan gets his museum
TULSA — True to form, Bob Dylan got his museum this week. The smell of fresh timber stayed for a long time in the air. The fire marshal was checking emergency sprinklers and workers were setting up a jukebox with Dylan’s greatest hits instead of the solitary genius himself.
This month, a new museum and archive will open in Tulsa. It will be dedicated to the works of Dylan. It will be a collection of a six-year journey. This journey began when the foundation of a local banking and oil billionaire George Kaiser brought a huge personal archive of Dylan. Then they decided to create a home for it.
When will the museum open to the public?
The center will open to the public on Tuesday. It will be the first time when the public will see some of more than 100,000 items in Dylan’s personal archive. These include multiple song drafts, rare recordings and videos, and historic artifacts. For instance, the thrashed Turkish drum inspired the classic song “Mr. Tambourine Man.” All these things give a historic new look into the creative engine that has driven the singer’s 60-year-career.
Better understanding of Dylan
Organizers hope that the 29,000-square-foot, $10 million centers will become a cultural touchstone in Tulsa. It will provide a greater understanding of the great musician to both fans and hardcore Dylanologists. It’s about a person who at the age of 80 is considered the country’s greatest living artist. Steven Jenkins is the director of the Dylan Center. He says that they don’t intend to try to explain the Bob Dylan mystery. No matter how hard we try, the man at the core of all this somehow continues to remain elusive.
Historian Douglas Brinkley, a patron of the center, said it will give a great understanding of the body of work of the artist at a time when there has been an occurrence of interest in Dylan. He also won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016 for creating “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
About the Dylan’s museum
Brinkley shared that the Nobel Prize caused a lot of questions. It was for those who didn‘t like Dylan’s voice or thought his artistry was only related to folk and rock-and-roll. It was to wake them up and realize that he’s one of our greatest literary masters, a national treasure. Like other artists Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, and Woody Guthrie, he was also among those who embody the best of the American spirit and are loved around the world.
A depiction of Dylan’s moody expressions from a 1965 photo now rises above the Tulsa arts district, on the side of an old brick warehouse complex that also consists of the museum of Woody Guthrie. He was an Oklahoma folk singer who was also Dylan’s early musical hero. The entrance hall of the Dylan Center is marked by a playful gate, a 16-foot swirl of iron castoffs and mechanical implements that Dylan welded and gave to the center.
FAQS
1. What was their last performance of Dylan?
Dylan, who will turn 81 this month, ended with a haunting performance of “Every Grain of Sand,” his 1981 song about a man grappling with faith and mortality: “Onward in my journey, I come to understand … that every hair is numbered, like every grain of sand.”
2. Did Dylan notice the building when he came last time?
When Dylan came to Tulsa for a concert last month, he did not visit the center being created in his honor, although his longtime bassist, Tony Garnier, did stop by.
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