And the Grammy Museum Goes to…Newark!

Credit Bob Santelli, Monmouth University graduate and onetime Asbury Park Press reporter, for delivering the new Grammy Museum to Newark.
Santelli, the founding executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles and a former Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum vice president, “is as Jersey as Jersey gets,” says Daniel Cherry, chief marketing officer at the Prudential Center and founding executive director of the new museum (full name: Grammy Museum Experience Prudential Center). The museum opens to the public on October 20.

The two music fans had been thinking of ways to “pay tribute to the great music of Jersey,” says Cherry, a Maplewood resident. Their ideas shifted from a single show to a full-fledged museum.

The new facility emphasizes education and interactive experiences—such as a tutorial by E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg on how to master the drum parts of “Born in The USA.”

“We went down to Asbury Park and actually recorded him teaching students,” Cherry says.

In another interactive feature, Wyclef Jean walks fans through the art of writing a rap tune. Though Weinberg and Jean are New Jersey artists, the new museum will not focus entirely on our state. “You’ll see a lot of great Jersey legends, but we want this to be a world-renowned music experience,” Cherry says. The museum, on the Prudential Center’s ground floor, has a 2,000-square-foot traveling exhibition space and a 8,200-square-foot space for permanent exhibitions. First up in the traveling exhibition space (through early 2018) is “And the Grammy Goes To …,” a multimedia exploration of Grammy winners from throughout the show’s 59-year history.

“You can’t just Google these acceptance speeches and Grammy moments because they’re copyrighted,” says Cherry, “so being able to see them here, in this setting, is pretty special.”

In addition to the original Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, the Recording Academy, which presents the Grammy Awards, has museums in Nashville and the blues hotbed of Cleveland, Mississippi.