Earlier this week, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum celebrated the addition of the Marty Stuart Collection to the museum’s permanent holdings. Stuart’s collection of more than 22,000 items is the largest private assemblage of country music artifacts in the world, joining the world’s largest public collection held by the museum.
The acquisition was made possible through the generosity of Stuart, along with a lead preservation gift from the Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation and major additional support from Loretta and Jeff Clarke. The nonprofit museum now owns the collection, holding it in the public trust and providing the highest level of artifact care and collection management.
The Marty Stuart Collection spans over a century of country music history and includes more than 1,000 stage wear and clothing items, 100 instruments, 50 original song manuscripts and more. Items in the collection include significant artifacts from Country Music Hall of Fame members Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, Charley Pride, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and many others. Additionally, Stuart’s collection includes items from his own Country Music Hall of Fame career, including his expansive collection of photographs taken by Stuart himself, which have been exhibited at museums and published in books.
The momentous occasion was celebrated during a special ceremony in the museum’s Ford Theater illuminating Stuart’s passion for country music and its preservation. The event featured several performances with historic instruments from Stuart’s collection:
- Country music trio Chapel Hart performed “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” with recording artist and songwriter Charlie Worsham playing a 1970 Fender Telecaster once owned by Pops Staples, the patriarch and a member of gospel and R&B group the Staple Singers, who recorded the song.
- Country Music Hall of Fame member Vince Gill performed “Marty & Me,” a newly written song by Gill and Stuart. Gill played George Jones’ 1958 Martin D-28 guitar, customized with unique, mother-of-pearl inlays and Jones’ name on the fingerboard.
- Grammy-winning artist Chris Stapleton performed “Why Me Lord,” which was recorded by Johnny Cash and written and previously recorded by Kris Kristofferson. Stapleton played Cash’s Martin D-45 acoustic guitar, which also belonged to Hank Williams.
- Marty Stuart closed the ceremony with a performance of Flatt & Scruggs’ “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,” with Shawn Camp playing Lester Flatt’s Martin D-28 guitar from the museum’s permanent collection.
The backing band for the event included members of the Earls of Leicester and consisted of Mike Bub (bass), Shawn Camp (acoustic guitar), Charlie Cushman (banjo), Jimmy Stewart (dobro), Johnny Warren (fiddle) and Jeff White (mandolin).
Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, provided remarks throughout the event. He opened the ceremony by reading from an essay 11-year-old Stuart wrote for a school assignment about his future goals: “A musician is what I have been wanting to be. That is my true goal for life, and I hope to accomplish this goal and do it well because music will be my love forever,” Stuart wrote.
“Marty Stuart has fulfilled those childhood dreams many times over. Today, he is making our dreams come true, with the crucial help of two key donors,” said Young. “We’re incredibly grateful for Marty’s philanthropy — and a lead gift from the Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation with major support from Loretta and Jeff Clarke — for enabling the museum to safeguard and share this historic collection in perpetuity. We’re here to celebrate this remarkable addition to our collection, revel in Marty’s extraordinary foresight and collecting skill, and rejoice in a new chapter for this museum.”
Many items from the Marty Stuart Collection will be on display as part of the museum’s permanent exhibition, Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present, which takes visitors chronologically through the history of country music. Artifacts on display rotate often and Stuart’s collection will play a key role in the exhibit’s narrative and the museum’s educational mission.
As part of the acquisition agreement, the museum has entered a longstanding collaboration with Marty Stuart’s Congress of Country Music in his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where it will exhibit items from the Marty Stuart Collection at its forthcoming museum. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will loan additional artifacts from its own permanent collection for display, as well as provide preservation, education and administrative consultation and support to the Congress.
“This is a top of the world moment for me,” said Marty Stuart. “To have my collection live alongside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s is monumental, to be a part of a ceremony and witness the Congress of Country Music and its people formally welcomed into the family of country music is a spiritual high. And, to share such a gathering with family and friends from both Nashville, as well as Mississippi, is just the best. Such a day only comes along once in a lifetime.”
During the ceremony, Stuart formally presented his childhood essay to the museum.
Mandy Macke, executive director of the Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation, also spoke at the event about the importance of the collection and its preservation.
“The Walker Foundation is deeply honored to play a role in making this dream a reality,” said Macke. “The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is the ideal steward of this precious collection. Not only will it extend the highest level of care to each individual artifact, but it will also share and showcase the collection’s spirit with the world.”
The donation ceremony is available to watch on the museum’s YouTube channel
