GRAMMY MUSEUM® AND GRAMMY FOUNDATION® JOIN TO EXPAND MUSIC EDUCATION AND PRESERVATION EFFORTS
LOS ANGELES (April 17, 2017) — The GRAMMY Museum® and GRAMMY Foundation® have announced that the two organizations are merging to become the leading educational institution dedicated to broadening the historical and cultural significance of music. Combining the strengths of the highly complementary organizations, the newly expanded GRAMMY Museum Foundation will offer the best of each organization’s initiatives in preservation, education, exhibitions, and public programming. The integration was approved earlier this year by The Recording Academy® and AEG, under which the Museum was developed as a joint partnership in 2008, as well as by the respective Boards of each organization.
“Both the GRAMMY Museum and GRAMMY Foundation have done such truly remarkable work as individual organizations that we started to think about what we could achieve together,” said Neil Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy. “This integration will allow us to combine our resources and the expertise of our dedicated staffs to increase the impact of our shared vision: to cultivate a greater understanding of the history and cultural significance of music, inspire its appreciation, and advance its future.”
To help fulfill its commitment of providing the best in preservation, education, exhibitions, and public programming, the GRAMMY Museum has expanded its executive team. Scott Goldman, previously Vice President of the GRAMMY Foundation and MusiCares, has been appointed Executive Director of the newly expanded GRAMMY Museum, overseeing development, programming, curatorial services, and strategic planning. Bob Santelli, the Museum’s original and previous Executive Director, will transition into the newly created position of Founding Executive Director, and will focus on the pursuit of domestic and international market expansions, development of business alliances and strategies, and opportunities for further growth and evolution of the GRAMMY Museum and its missions.
“We are all very proud of the incredible work that the GRAMMY Museum and the GRAMMY Foundation have done to advance the role of music in our culture,” said Dan Beckerman, President and CEO of AEG. “By joining together, they will have an even greater ability to create innovative exhibits and programs that tell important stories and engage new audiences. We would like to thank Bob Santelli and his team for their hard work over the past 10 years in making the GRAMMY Museum a world-class institution and we welcome Scott Goldman to the Museum as it begins this important new chapter in its history.”
In addition, the Museum’s Deputy Executive Director, Rita George, has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer, working to ensure the Museum’s excellence in exhibits and programs, overseeing acquisitions, and managing domestic and international projects. Under this new management structure, Wayne Zahner will serve as Chief Financial Officer and Michael Sticka will serve as Controller for the GRAMMY Museum Foundation.
“For 10 years, I have had the unique and exciting opportunity to run what began as a one-of-a-kind 21st century Museum,” said Santelli. “Together with my stellar staff, we’ve created interactive exhibits that have traveled the country and the world. And now, with footprints in the south via GRAMMY Museum Mississippi and our GRAMMY Museum Gallery® at Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville along with our recently announced projects in New Jersey and China, I couldn’t be more excited to continue the expansion of the GRAMMY Museum brand.”
“Both the GRAMMY Museum and GRAMMY Foundation were born out of the need to preserve music and advance its future, especially among the young people of today,” said Goldman. “By bringing together these two organizations that have already made a lasting impact as individual entities, we stand to achieve tremendous gains as well as scale our efforts. I’m thrilled to lead the newly expanded GRAMMY Museum and look forward to bringing more resources and scale to our programs as we continue to use music as a gateway to learning.”
Over the past year, the GRAMMY Foundation has provided 20 grants, totaling $300,000, to facilitate a wide range of research, archiving, and preservation projects. Since 2010, the Foundation has awarded more than $1,000,000 in cash grants to more than 600 schools around the country. Since opening, the Museum has curated more than 60 exhibits, including more than 20 that have toured other cultural institutions across the world, and hosted more than 650 public programs, featuring artist interviews, live performances, film screenings, lectures, and continuing education classes. This past year, the GRAMMY Museum and GRAMMY Foundation collectively served nearly 100,000 students through local and national education initiatives.
In 2017, the newly expanded GRAMMY Museum plans to broaden and strengthen its portfolio of programs by including those that were previously under the GRAMMY Foundation umbrella. Moving forward, the Museum will place a stronger emphasis on expanding its education and curriculum-based initiatives in an effort to narrow the accessibility gap created by pared-down music education programming in schools nationwide.
The GRAMMY Foundation was established in 1988 to cultivate the understanding, appreciation and advancement of the contribution of recorded music to American culture — from the artistic and technical legends of the past to the still unimagined musical breakthroughs of future generations of music professionals. The Foundation accomplished this mission through programs and activities that engage the music industry and cultural community as well as the general public. The Foundation worked in partnership year-round with The Recording Academy to bring national attention to important issues such as the value and impact of music and arts education and the urgency of preserving our rich cultural heritage.
The GRAMMY Museum is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization created in 2008 as a partnership between The Recording Academy and AEG. Paying tribute to music’s rich cultural history, the 21st century Museum explores and celebrates the enduring legacies of all forms of music, the creative process, the art and technology of the recording process, and the history of the premier recognition of excellence in recorded music. The GRAMMY Museum features 30,000 square feet of interactive permanent and traveling exhibits, with four floors of dynamic and engaging multimedia presentations, and is located within L.A. LIVE, the downtown Los Angeles sports, entertainment and residential district. Through thought-provoking and dynamic public and educational programs and exhibits, guests will experience music from a never-before-seen insider perspective that only the GRAMMY Museum can deliver.
Having debuted in Los Angeles in 2008, the GRAMMY Museum has since opened a GRAMMY Museum in Cleveland, Miss., a GRAMMY Museum Gallery in Nashville, Tenn., in March 2016, and has plans to open a GRAMMY Museum Experience™ Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., in fall 2017 and its first international expansion, a GRAMMY Museum in Sanya, China, within the next three years. For more information, visit www.grammymuseum.org, follow @TheGRAMMYMuseum on Twitter and Instagram, and like “The GRAMMY Museum” on Facebook.