Motown
town’s influence continues to reverberate in culture and entertainment in 2019.
“The music is timeless – it’s probably the high point of American popular music,” said Bob Santelli, the Grammy Museum’s founding executive director and curator of the Motown exhibit. “It’s the embodiment of so many great things about American music. There isn’t an African-American artist, in particular, that hasn’t been directly or indirectly influenced by the sound of Motown. You could be a hip-hop artist and, guaranteed, you’ve been impacted by Motown.”
The exhibit arrives during a busy 60th-anniversary year for Motown, including an array of activities to be hosted in Detroit by the Motown Museum. CBS will air the Grammys’ tribute concert April 21, and the Berry Gordy-produced documentary “Hitsville: The Making of Motown” is headed to Showtime.
“Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations” was scheduled to make its Broadway premiere Thursday night. Diana Ross is marking her own milestone – a 75th birthday – March 26 and 28 with nationwide screenings of her 1983 Central Park concert.
“The story of Motown is about people – the people who made the music and wrote it,” said the Supremes’ Mary Wilson, who loaned two gowns to the exhibit. “The people are the staying power. The music is the staying power.”
Motown has long been a fixture at the Grammy Museum’s flagship L.A. site, which opened in 2008. The new exhibit will include some elements from that collection, but Santelli said the vast majority of it has never been publicly displayed.
“The nice thing about the Grammys is we have connections with all the artists, so we can go straight to the source,” he said. “And when we don’t, we can go to other institutions like the Motown Museum (in Detroit).”
This is the latest collaboration between the Grammy Museum and the LBJ library. The exhibit “Ladies and Gentlemen ... The Beatles!” made its de- but at the Austin site in 2015 and has been touring the world since.
“The LBJ Presidential Library is focused on life during President (Lyndon) Johnson’s administration,” said Nikki Diller, the library’s museum exhibits specialist. “We’re a natural fit to showcase Motown’s unprecedented rise and influence on popular culture that started in the 1960s. That’s our era.”
The Motown exhibit will open April 13 with a day of activities, including Motown yoga, cover bands and pizza from the Detroit-themed Austin restaurant Via 313.
A VIP opening party on April 10 also will cap “The Summit on Race in America,” a three-day event hosted by the LBJ Foundation. Santelli will moderate a panel discussion with Wilson, The Temptations’ Otis Williams, The Four Tops’ Duke Fakir and The Miracles’ Claudette Robinson – something of a family reunion for the Motown alums.
“It’s going to be fun,” Wilson said. “We don’t have the opportunity to get together very often.”