Olson Kundig Offers a Fresh Narrative on the Life of Bob Dylan for a Center Honoring His Work
Words: Rebecca Dalzell
Photography: Matthew Millman
Bob Dylan is famously enigmatic. He reinvents his own history, rarely grants interviews, and skipped the ceremony when he won the Nobel Prize in 2016. Dylan’s archive, which the George Kaiser Family Foundation acquired that same year, hardly clears things up. Now held at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, its over 100,000 items—including notebooks, recordings, and videos—reveal little about the man himself. For Olson Kundig, the firm selected to conceive the center’s interiors and exhibition design, the musician’s mystique presented an opportunity to take an unconventional narrative approach to the $10 million endeavor.
The project is located in the city’s downtown arts district and shares a block-long building with the Woody Guthrie Center. Both are owned by the GKFF and part of its mission to turn Tulsa into a cultural destination. (Dylan was a disciple of Guthrie, but otherwise has no connection to Oklahoma.) In 2017, the GKFF held a competition for the design of a facility that would house the archive and related exhibits. Architect Alan Maskin, a principal at and co-owner of Olson Kundig—and a lifelong Dylan fan—was relieved to learn that the musician was not involved. “I didn’t want to worry about pleasing Bob Dylan,” he recalls. “I wanted to make a portrait of him.”
