Over the last decade, Nashville’s downtown honky-tonk district has exploded with bars boasting brand names related to artists, including Garth Brooks, Eric Church and Blake Shelton.
The next wave of artist venues might well be museums.
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The Alan Jackson Museum and Distillery opened in June, occupying part of a building already devoted to the Johnny Cash Museum, which officially unveiled a second-floor expansion on Oct. 13. Additionally, Dolly Parton’s Life of Many Colors Museum, and the late singer’s new SongTeller Hotel, had a joint ribbon-cutting ceremony on Oct. 9.
There are some barriers to entry — new artists, for example, aren’t likely to have enough stuff to fill a serious museum. Plus, not every artist is diligent at keeping pieces of their past. Still, there’s clearly a market for country music tourists who want to visit Nashville for more than just a good buzz, or who bring kids who are legally prohibited from entering a tavern.
“We need more family attractions,” says Icon Entertainment Group founder Bill Miller, whose firm owns the Cash Museum. “We need more non-food-and-beverage attractions.”
The artist-focused museums are not alone in Nashville’s downtown, which offers three different establishments that document broader genres. The National Museum of African American Music opened in 2021, the Museum of Christian & Gospel Music launched in 2025, and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum — the grandaddy of them all — became one of the district’s centerpieces 25 years ago, after operating for more than three decades in a barn-like structure on Music Row.
The Country Hall has, in some ways, set a precedent for other outlets to follow. In addition to selling tickets and merchandise, it has developed other means of generating income, including Hatch Show Press, which prints concert bills; a publishing wing; and several spaces that are rentable to outside interests. It also changes exhibits on a regular basis, providing incentive for customers to come back for a different experience.
The Jackson Museum’s distillery operates similarly, providing visitors the option to fill a personal bottle of Jackson’s Silverbelly whiskey, hosting private events and running a tavern with drinks designed specifically by Jackson’s daughter, Mattie, a master blender. It feels a bit like a neighborhood bar, but the tourist-based nature of the clientele often finds total strangers from separate parts of the world bonding as they share their experiences with Jackson’s music.
“People sit up here 45 minutes, an hour, and they’ll just talk and tell their stories,” says Jackson Museum/Silverbelly CEO Robbie Goldsmith. “That’s one of the coolest parts of working here. You hear how he’s impacted so many lives. It’s crazy. We’ve had people crying right here.”
Part of a museum’s attraction is the sense that a visitor can connect with a public figure who often seems unreachable through the artifacts that were part of their life. That’s particularly true with late performers, such as Cash and Parton.
“You do learn a lot about people that you wouldn’t know when you find private letters that are suddenly on display, or you look at someone’s clothing that you might have seen them in a million times, but it’s hanging up, and you see that it’s worn a bit,” says Carlene Carter, the daughter of Cash’s wife, June Carter Cash. “People that aren’t [already fans] could go with someone and end up being a fan because they liked the person that they met through their stuff, their klediments or the things that mattered to them.”
The Cash Museum’s expansion includes several new technical options that can enhance the experience. Owing to the Man in Black’s fascination with trains, the exhibit includes a locomotive element with sounds and rumbling seats that simulate a ride on the rails. It’s also possible to record a Cash song in a small studio and have a recording emailed, or to perform for a camera on a “Johnny Cash Show” stage.
The Life of Many Colors Museum has its own extra attractions — most obviously with the multi-story hotel in which it’s housed. The building has a performance stage, Parton’s Live, and the lobby outside the museum was designed as an event space, flexible enough to accommodate guest lists of different sizes or gatherings with unique purposes.
“If you wanted to get married here, you could; if you want to have a party here, you can,” Parton creative director Steve Summers said at the grand opening ceremony. “You don’t want to tell the room what it has to be. You want the room to offer up a canvas and then let the consumer tell you what it’s going to be. We don’t know what this room is going to do yet, but the fans will tell us. They will come in and be the decision makers as to what this can function as for them.”
The Parton museum has all the artifacts one would expect — dresses, photos, awards — but it also has some embellishments that personalize it around her image: a sparkly floor, sleek butterfly wall decorations and lighting fixtures, and butterfly-shaped books hanging from the ceiling in the Imagination Library section of the museum.
“You can’t go to Walmart and buy this stuff,” Summers quipped. “Everything in here is created, is generated, is molded, is thought out, is drawn, is planned. Every single thing you see is intentional … to tell a story and to make you, the fan, see the part of Dolly that you’re looking for.”
Several other artist-themed museums have come and gone. A Patsy Cline Museum formerly occupied the floor that became the expanded section of the Cash Museum. A George Jones Museum opened on Second Avenue in 2015, but was set back by a Christmas bombing on the street and by COVID, eventually closing in 2021. A Glen Campbell Museum opened in 2020, one month before the pandemic decimated tourism. It shut down in 2023.
Barring another pandemic, the new artist museums have built-in sources for traffic and are cognizant of business travelers, too. The Music City Center has made Nashville a key convention hub, and a variety of parties and/or museum tours are possible for corporate clients and other formal engagements. The Alan Jackson Museum, for example, hosted a wedding party for 300 that allowed the visitors to roam the museum in addition to toasting the couple.
The Super Bowl, notes Goldsmith, is scheduled for 2030 in Nashville, and the downtown footprint will be crawling with fans while also attracting a host of official soirees. By then, the artist-themed bars and artist-specific museums may be making way for the next wave of star-themed attractions. Goldsmith believes he has it. Jackson’s museum “is the first distillery,” Goldsmith says. “Mark my words: In the next five years, you’ll see more artist distilleries in Nashville.”
