Former GRAMMY Museum director to give talk on GRAMMY Awards

Former GRAMMY Museum executive director Bob Santelli will speak at Oregon State University on Thursday, Jan. 26, providing a backstage look at the GRAMMY Awards, the most watched music television program in the world.

The presentation will be at 7:30 p.m. at The LaSells Stewart Center, Construction and Engineering Auditorium on the OSU campus in Corvallis. A question-and-answer period will follow.

Santelli served as the executive director of the GRAMMY Museum from 2008 to 2016, and was instrumental in helping OSU become an official university affiliate of the Los Angeles-based museum. He is currently the director of popular music and performing arts in the College of Liberal Arts.

Santelli will show rare performance clips, detail the process by which artists get nominated for GRAMMY Awards and share stories of great GRAMMY moments. The 59th annual GRAMMY Awards air Feb. 12, 2017, on CBS.

Santelli is the author of more than a dozen books on American music, including “Greetings from E Street” and The Bob Dylan Scrapbook.” He has contributed to Rolling Stone and the New York Times, among other news outlets. In 1993, he was one of the original curators of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, eventually moving to Cleveland to become the museum’s first director of education and vice president of public programs.

In 2000, he became the chief executive officer of the Experience Music Project in Seattle, the first interactive music museum. Santelli also developed the UK’s first pop music museum, the British Music Experience. Named executive of The GRAMMY Museum in 2006, he created “An Evening With…” series that featured in-depth interviews with artists such as Dave Matthews, Brian Wilson, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Nicks and Clive Davis.

Since arriving at OSU in September, Santelli has brought a group of students to the White House for a special music education program, created programs for songwriters across campus and in the community, taught classes on popular culture, and maintained a partnership with the GRAMMY Museum.