Grateful Dead Archives to Formally Open to the Public

[Photo via the Grateful Dead Archive]

This Spring, the Grateful Dead archive located within the McHenry Library at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will formally open to the public. According to a post on Grateful Dead scribe Blair Jackson’s Dead.net blog, UCSC Dead archivist Nicholas Meriwether will open the newly renovated archives with a debut exhibit in April along with a grand opening celebration in May. The archives will open with the debut exhibit A Box of Rain: Archiving the Grateful Dead Phenomenon. According to Meriwether:

“The plan right now is to have probably two full-fledged exhibits per year. That will be determined in part by the funding we can engender. Our first exhibit will go up in April. We plan on having a big public party to inaugurate the Archive—that will be sometime in May and be free; probably with some live Dead music being played; no, not by any of the Dead. [Laughs] I’ll lead guided tours of the exhibit. The exhibit space is almost done in terms of the planning, and we’ve started construction on it.”

Meriwether is the author of The Deadheads’ Taping Compendium, Vol. I, and was also editor of All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon.

For more info on the archive’s opening, read Blair Jackson’s interview with Nicholas Meriwether on his Golden Road Blog.