Courtesy of Exhibit Development GroupStarting Saturday, Beatles fans in the U.S. won’t have to travel all the way to Liverpool, England, to take an up-close look at the band’s history.
That day, an expansive new Fab Four-themed exhibit titled “The Magical History Tour: A Beatles Memorabilia Exhibition” will open at The Henry Ford museum in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan.
Billed as “the most comprehensive Beatles exhibition ever assembled,” the display includes more than 150 artifacts from the collection of Peter Miniaci & Associates, a firm that specializes in items related to the legendary band. The exhibit takes visitors on a journey through the Beatles members’ lives and careers, from their days prior to the group’s formation through their heyday as international sensations to the music icons’ post-breakup years.
Among the memorabilia featured in “The Magical History Tour” are some instruments belonging to the band members, rare photos and posters, letters and documents, Beatles merchandise and much more. The display includes a drum kit from the pre-Beatles group The Quarrymen, an infamous document dissolving the Fab Four’s partnership and the copy of John Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s Double Fantasy album that Lennon signed for his murderer, Mark David Chapman, the day Chapman shot him to death.
The exhibition isn’t officially sanctioned by The Beatles, but a representative for Exhibits Development Group, which produced the attraction, says the band gave it their blessing.
“They basically, for all intents and purposes, said, ‘Good luck,'” EDG’s Will Peterson tells Billboard. “So we picked up what they were putting down and went ahead and planned an exhibition that is sensitive to their copyrights, and we’re certainly not trying to be at conflict with anything that the Beatles are doing. We’re just trying to tell the story in a unique and different way.”
Visit TheHenryFord.org for pricing details.The exhibit will run through September 18, and then — according to Billboard — reopen in March 2017 at the Putnam Museum in Davenport, Iowa.
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