Gift from the James Stephen Turner Family Foundation Launches Museum’s Preservation Fundraising Campaign to Support Collection Care and Management

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – April 1, 2025 – The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum has named the galleries housing the museum’s permanent exhibition, Sing Me Back Home: Folk Roots to the Present, in honor of Judy and Steve Turner. Made possible through a multi-year leadership gift from the James Stephen Turner Family Foundation, “The Judy and Steve Turner Galleries” span two floors of the museum, and their naming recognizes the Turner family’s leadership support, including Steve Turner’s longtime commitment to the preservation and growth of the museum’s permanent collection. The gift supports the highest level of care and management of the museum’s growing collection as well as access for generations of researchers and learners from all over the world.

Steve Turner, who passed away in February of this year, was chairman emeritus and served as a longtime board chair for the museum. Judy Turner was a key supporter of the museum’s educational initiatives and passed away in June 2023.

“Throughout Steve Turner’s leadership, he constantly urged staff and stakeholders alike to hold the museum’s collection in the highest regard,” said Kyle Young, chief executive officer of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “As he often reminded us, the collection should be cared for at the uppermost level and should continue to grow and expand. Its current growth and expansion have happened, in large part, due to Steve’s steady leadership and strong resolve. I can’t imagine more fitting names to have recognized in our core gallery spaces.”

In 2024, the museum’s unrivaled collection of country music treasures grew dramatically and with the Turner family’s leadership gift, the museum is launching a preservation fundraising campaign, which will continue to underwrite the intensive, multi-year work of processing and cataloging the museum’s archives, rehousing and shelving, digitizing rare manuscripts and correspondence and more. The campaign is the first fundraising initiative of its kind in the museum’s history and will offer permanent naming rights for limited spaces within the museum.

The Sing Me Back Home exhibition showcases foundational artifacts that span the 100-year narrative of country music history. These artifacts are rotated on a regular basis. Recent additions to the exhibition include Johnny Cash’s first black suit, embellished by his mother; Rhiannon Giddens’ banjo hand-built by banjo maker Jim Hartel; Don Helms’ 1948 Gibson Console Grande double-neck steel guitar; the original handwritten draft of Kris Kristofferson’s lyrics for “Help Me Make It Through the Night;”  Charley Pride’s 1967 Fender Coronado II hollow-body electric guitar; and Hank Williams laced-front shirt designed by western-wear tailor Nudie Cohn.

About the museum’s collection
For more than five decades, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has amassed a collection of country music artifacts and archival items that is the finest and most comprehensive of its kind in the world. The museum celebrates and showcases a rich American art form, preserving and interpreting items that document the history of an American musical experience rooted in Southern culture. The museum’s diverse artifact and archival collections comprise more than 40,000 moving images on film, video and digital formats; 500,000 photographs; more than 300,000 sound recordings, including commercial music releases, interviews and demonstration recordings; nearly 800 oral history interviews; 2,500 items of clothing and accessories; 600 musical instruments; 75,000 posters; 5,000 linear feet of print materials; and thousands of additional objects illustrating the lives and careers of performers, industry figures and the culture of country music. Read more about the museum’s collections.