The “Springsteen Center” opens in New Jersey (but it is not a museum)
The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music opens. After a series of launch initiatives (including a couple of concerts crowded with rock stars), what is not a Boss museum, but a cultural center, opens its doors today, June 13th.
The structure, over 2,700 square meters on the campus of Monmouth University, in New Jersey, hosts Springsteen’s personal archive, but also exhibitions dedicated to the history of American musical genres and their protagonists. Springsteen, speaking to the New York Times, said that he did not want a personal museum, and for this reason the project was initially viewed by the musician with a certain distrust. “It seemed too solemn. I asked myself, ‘Do you really want your name on a building?'”
The Boss changed his mind when the project stopped being focused on him and became a center dedicated to American music as a whole. “When we focused on the fact that it would be a place that I would share with all these other musicians, that it would be a center for American music itself, I said, ‘Well, that’s how I see myself. I’m a little link in a big chain.'”
Springsteen in fact rejects the idea of being the absolute protagonist of the story that the center wants to tell: “I’m the one who came and picked up the flag. That’s how it works. You carry it on for a while and then you pass it on to the next person.”
The center’s objective looks above all to the new generations: “I will feel satisfied when I see a row of school buses in the parking lot,” explained the musician. The idea is that the center will continue to be above all “a place that attracts young people looking for a sense of historical continuity, for inspiration, for how American music shapes culture and how culture shapes politics.” “Twenty years from now I would like to see, and probably will see, as my relevance fades, a little glass cabinet with the main things I have done, surrounded by many other extraordinary musicians.”
Among the most significant sections there is also one dedicated to protest songs, a theme that Springsteen still considers current. “There’s always something to protest in the United States,” he notes, citing contemporary artists like the Dropkick Murphys.
And despite his recent political stances and the presence of content related to cultural activism, Springsteen insists on the inclusive nature of the project: “Whatever your political ideas are, you will come here and you will be enlightened and entertained. You may not agree with everything you see, but that’s the situation. I think it’s a place for everyone.”
