Bob Dylan museum in Tulsa set to open in 2022

The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma will bring together over 100,000 artefacts and unreleased recordings from the artist’s life

The new Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma has announced that it will open to the public on 10 May 2022.

The three-storey museum is “dedicated to the study and appreciation of Bob Dylan and his worldwide cultural significance”, and is set to house more than 100,000 artefacts from throughout Dylan’s life and career.

This includes handwritten lyric manuscripts, previously unreleased recordings, film performances, rare photographs and musical instruments. Among them is the earliest-known version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, recorded by Dylan at a friend’s apartment in the autumn of 1962.

The Bob Dylan Center will be located in the Tulsa Arts District near to the Woody Guthrie Center, who was among Dylan’s key early influences.

The announcement of the museum’s opening comes five years after the sprawling Bob Dylan Archive was sold to the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa in 2016. The new centre will become the Bob Dylan Archive’s public venue, as well as featuring permanent, temporary, and traveling exhibitions. 

Late last year, 79-year-old Dylan made headlines by selling his entire back catalogue of 600+ songs to Universal Publishing Group in a reported nine-figure deal.

He continues to write and release new music, with his most recent album Rough and Rowdy Ways receiving a four-star review from The Independent’s Helen Brown.