As the Springsteen Center's doors begin to open officially, Part 2 of 3: our advance tour
- Shawn Poole
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
June 13, 2026
Letters To You contributing photographer Mark Krajnak and I were fortunate to be granted a special advance tour of The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music's new building, almost two weeks before its official public opening today. On June 3, the Center's Director of Curatorial Affairs, Melissa Kozlowski, and its Museum Educator, Aidan Vogel, were kind enough to give Mark and me a guided, private tour, even as they and the rest of the Center's staff still were in the midst of working furiously to have everything ready in time for the building's first public visitors today.
As you can see in some of Mark's photos here, some of the exhibits' display cases were still awaiting the completion of their protective plexiglass installations. If we didn't know better to refrain from doing so, we easily could have just reached out and touched, say, B.B. King's guitar case for one of his legendary "Lucille" guitars. You also will notice a few stepladders and other installation equipment still scattered about on the floor in the background of some of these photos. That's how busy with installation and other preparatory tasks they still were on the day of our visit, all of which makes us even more appreciative of Kozlowski and Vogel giving up some of their precious time for our private advance tour.
One of the first things I noticed on my way across the boardwalk-style bridge that leads to the building's main entrance is that something I long had expected to see was missing. When the plans for the new building were announced back in October 2023, it was stated that just before visitors began walking across the "boardwalk," we would step over a significant date engraved on the ground: September 9, 1956, the date of Elvis Presley's first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. I asked Melissa Kozlowski about the missing engraving, and she explained that the idea eventually got dropped in the final building-planning stages mainly because it was decided to not place so much emphasis on one single figure's influence on Springsteen and American music, even one as monumentally important as Elvis. It is a smart "bigger picture" decision with which I fully concur.
Kozlowski also told me something interesting about all of the exposed wooden beams and black metal framing seen throughout the building. The blonde wood and black metal subtly mimic the coloring of Bruce Springsteen's now-iconic Fender Esquire/Telecaster hybrid guitar, as seen on the album-covers of Born to Run, Live 1975-85, and Wrecking Ball, among other places, through the years.
The first floor of the building contains the 241-seat Powell Soundstage state-of-the-art theater. (Many of the Center's various sections and exhibit-spaces have been named after major donors and supporters.) This is where visitors can view Thom Zimny's short film The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen’s American Music Journey, in which Springsteen himself welcomes visitors and gives an overview of American music and his "just another link in the chain" role in it. (We'll have more on this film in Part 3 of this three-part series.)
Also on the first floor is all of the exhibit space devoted to the other figures in American music who've influenced Bruce Springsteen. And most of the exhibits devoted to Springsteen's career, along with the Springsteen archives and additional material/exhibits on the E Street Band, are housed on the Center's second floor. It's a great way of physically conveying that Bruce and the E Streeters stand on the shoulders of the great American music figures who preceded them, and that those figures are at the foundation of everything that Bruce and his collaborators have accomplished over the years.
There is, however, one Springsteen exhibit currently on the first floor, devoted to his Monmouth University connections. The amazing highlight of this exhibit for me was seeing a poster for a concert at Monmouth in which Steel Mill and Dionne Warwick shared billing. I've never before heard of this strangely-paired show mentioned anywhere. The poster also was signed by both Bruce Springsteen and Dionne Warwick during this year's American Music Honors festivities. [Update on June 15, 2026: With much-appreciated outreach from reader Brian aka "lilbud," the founder of the great new website Databruce.com, I was able to realize that I slightly misinterpreted what's on view in the Springsteen Center's "Bruce Springsteen at Monmouth" display-case. Both Steel Mill and Dionne Warwick did indeed perform in the gymnasium at what was then Monmouth College on the same 1970 "Spring Weekend," but not on the same date or bill. Steel Mill performed on Friday, April 24 and Dionne Warwick performed on Saturday, April 25. Below, you can view a full, clear image of what's in the display-case and signed by Bruce and Dionne, courtesy of the Springsteen Center. This image also reveals that what Bruce and Dionne signed isn't actually a vintage concert poster, but an enlarged reproduction of a vintage newspaper ad from Monmouth College/University's long-standing student-run newspaper, The Outlook.]
Something else I don't recall ever seeing before in any other museum or exhibit: a genuine one-stringed "diddley bow" guitar, which can be found in the America’s Instrument: The Evolution of the Electric Guitar exhibit. The diddley bow played an essential role in the development of blues and roots music, as well as being at least one of the likely inspirations for the great Elias McDaniel's famous stage name.
The exhibits currently are supplemented by more than a dozen interactive experiences, with audio-video elements. This helps to make everything more accessible to the variety of expected visitors to the Center, including many younger and/or less knowledgeable visitors who are just beginning to learn more about American music. Also among the first floor's audio-video supplements: a video-loop of filmed highlights from the four annual American Music Honors events that the Center has held to date.
We also bumped into the Center's Executive Director, Bob Santelli, who encouraged us to check out one of his favorite displays, the jazz case. In one single display case, you can find instruments played by Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane, along with a dress worn in concert by Ella Fitzgerald. Very impressive indeed, and here's hoping that the Jersey-based Center soon can add to it an appropriate artifact from Red Bank, NJ's own Count Basie.
In addition to the permanent gallery of American music display cases on the first floor, there is rotating-exhibit space, currently occupied by Chimes of Freedom: Protest, Patriotism, and the Power of Song. This temporary exhibit explores the long history of using music and songs as tools of protest, agitation, and activism across the political spectrum. It spans centuries, from colonial songs to, of course, Bruce Springsteen's own 2026 protest song, "Streets Of Minneapolis."
We then headed up to the second floor to see all of the exhibit space devoted to Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. This floor is also where Springsteen's official archives are now housed, allowing visitors and scholars access to almost 48,000 items, including Bruce's personal items combined with items donated by fans through the past quarter-century, originally spearheaded by The Friends Of The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection.
It was at this point where I also got to discuss more in-depth with both Kozlowski and Vogel the Center's plans for K-12 educational access and beyond. Working with Monmouth University, the Center is equipped to offer teacher workshops, school visits, and online programs for classroom use. When students visit the Center on their class trips, they also will be able to utilize nearby on-campus Monmouth University classrooms and have lunch in the university's cafeteria spaces. This will provide students with not only an immersive American music education experience, but also at least a glimpse of a college campus, something that many visiting students might not experience otherwise. The Center has supplemented its own internal education programs with a TeachRock curriculum integration and enhancement. Monmouth University's students also will have access to opportunities for Center internships, archival research, and coursework integration.
The second floor, of course, is also where Springsteen fans of all types can view, learn from, and simply enjoy extensive exhibit space on Bruce and each of the core E Street Band members, both past and present. There are sections devoted to Bruce's education (including a recreation of his library and a cool revolving audio-video presentation of Bruce discussing books that have been especially significant and influential for him while each book is electronically displayed on a table,) and his songwriting (with selected notebook pages displayed alongside an excellent interactive electronic feature where visitors can learn more about songwriters who've influenced Springsteen, as well as songwriters whom he's gone on to influence.)
There's also a beautiful display of Springsteen-related photography through the decades, donated by Philadelphia-based attorney and Springsteen superfan/collector Robert Mongeluzzi. The "usual suspects" - Eric Meola, Frank Stefanko, Lynn Goldsmith, Danny Clinch, Pam Springsteen, etc. - can be found there, in gorgeously framed and displayed images.
The "In-Concert Room" displays concert-photo imagery, memorabilia, and fan-made signs collected by Springsteen during past tours, but best of all, there's a wall-size video screen with state-of-the-art sound displaying selected live video-clips from throughout Bruce's performing career. (It was playing - at an appropriately LOUD volume level - some vintage material from the Born to Run Tour during our visit. Awesome; simply awesome.) And the Jimmy Iovine "In-Studio" room, which still was under construction during our visit, offers fans chances to play instruments on a track along with Bruce and the E Streeters, and/or experiment with remixing the track to their liking.
Amazingly, with all of the above exhibits occupying the second floor, the Springsteen Archives themselves still take up much of the floorspace, currently 4226 square feet of it, to be precise. The Archives constantly continue to expand, of course, and both Kozlowski and Santelli hinted to me off-the-record that more news on that front will be announced soon. Stay tuned...
Viva The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, and viva American music!
The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music is now officially OPEN to the public! Click here to plan your visit.
Oh, and don't forget to visit the museum gift shop on your way out, of course...
