Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – Cleveland, OH
If you grew up with guitars, mixtapes, MTV, or playlists that never quite sit still in one genre, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is basically your mothership. Sitting on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, the museum is part archive, part shrine, and part playground for anyone who thinks music is more than background noise.
The Hall of Fame itself started as an idea in the early 1980s, but the museum building opened in 1995 in Cleveland, the city whose DJs helped popularize the term “rock and roll” in the first place.
The Building: Peak 1990s I. M. Pei
Even if you somehow didn’t care about the music, the building is worth a stop. Designed by I. M. Pei, it’s a stack of geometric shapes: a 162-foot tower, a big glass pyramid-style “tent,” and cantilevered volumes that jut out over a 65,000-square-foot plaza facing the lake.
The museum building itself opened in 1995. The base is roughly 150,000 square feet, most of it exhibition and event space, with a 162 foot tower and that glass “tent” that has become one of Cleveland’s main landmarks.
What You’ll See Inside
The museum has seven levels and more than 55,000 square feet of exhibition space, wrapped around a central atrium. Exhibits change constantly, but there are a few recurring themes and spaces worth calling out. The core permanent exhibits cover:
- The roots of rock – Gospel, blues, R&B, country, folk, and early electric experiments that set the foundation for what came later.
- Cities and scenes – Memphis and Sun Records, Detroit and Motown, Chicago blues, the British Invasion, West Coast psychedelia, New York punk, Seattle grunge, and more, with artifacts like Buddy Holly’s glasses, Elvis jumpsuits, and Chuck Berry’s guitar.
- Artist galleries – Focused areas for giants like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and others, with instruments, stage clothes, handwritten lyrics, and studio gear.
As you climb the building, you move from early history up through classic rock, punk, metal, hip hop, and pop, and eventually into current artists.
Inductions And Rotating Exhibits
The Hall of Fame side is built around inductees, artists whose first commercial release was at least 25 years ago and who are judged to have had a major impact on music and culture.
You don’t need to care about the politics of the voting process to enjoy the exhibits, but it helps to know that they refresh things constantly.
Oh, and they also have a room where you can try playing a bunch of instruments:
And a room with a live band so you can sing along!
There is so much to see, it’s crazy. So I can’t cover it all, but you can peruse the photo gallery here to whet your appetite for when you get a chance to go. Personally, I thought it was fantastic.
