Stars help to open Dylan museum
‘‘That’s my programme,’’ said Bill Pagel of Hibbing, Minnesota, America’s most obsessive Bob Dylan collector. ‘‘No, that’s my programme,’’ interjected his Greenwich Village rival Mitch Blank.
They’re both right – Pagel’s programme for Dylan’s first London concert and Blank’s programme for the 1964 Newport Folk Festival share a display case at the Bob Dylan Centre, a new museum that opened yesterday in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The museum sheds light on the elusive Minnesota bard but ultimately lets music lovers decide what his songs are all about. ‘‘It’s a story you could tell a million ways,’’ said Rock’n’roll Hall of Famer Elvis Costello, who participated in the opening week festivities.
To no-one’s surprise, Dylan wasn’t at the opening. The singersongwriter didn’t even stop by last month when he performed a few blocks away.
With more than 750,000 items in its digital archives – including thousands from Dylan himself – the museum serves the curious, the casual and the hardcore fan.
Costello curated a jukebox filled with 162 songs by Dylan, his influences and interpreters. There is even a metal gate that Dylan, an exhibited sculptor, made to greet visitors.
Dylan sold his personal archive to the Tulsa-based George Kaiser Family Foundation in 2016 for a reported US$20 million, in part because the foundation had saluted one of Dylan’s heroes by establishing the Woody Guthrie Centre there. Dylan was at the Guthrie Centre in April 2017 when he was supposed to be in Stockholm accepting the Nobel Prize for literature.
Dylan did not stipulate how his personal artefacts could be used by the museum, though his manager had ‘‘been a confidante on many things’’, said Steve Jenkins, the centre’s director.