Patsy Cline Museum to Close Amid Johnny Cash Museum Expansion
The Patsy Cline Museum located at 119 3rd Ave S in the Lower Broadway corridor of Nashville will be closing permanently on May 15th. Originally opened in April of 2017 on the second floor of the Johnny Cash Museum building, the space became a pilgrimage for fans of Patsy Cline, and a place for her Hall of Fame legacy to be enshrined after she died tragically on March 5th, 1963 in a plane crash.
Though Patsy Cline’s career was short-lived, she’s one of the most important and successful women to ever sing country music, and her recordings continue to strongly influence a whole host of contemporary performers in country music and beyond. But apparently, having a permanent space for her legacy in Music City is not valued enough. The exhibits are being decommissioned to make more room for an expansion of the Johnny Cash Museum.
The current Patsy Cline Museum space features hundreds of previously unseen pictures, videos, artifacts, and personal belongings of Patsy Cline. It is unclear where the artifacts will go after the museum is closed.
Meanwhile, this is the second time the Johnny Cash Museum will expand in lieu of paying tribute to another country music legend. In October of 2017, shortly after the opening of the Patsy Cline Museum, plans were announced to open a Merle Haggard Museum on the property as well, along with “Merle’s Meat + 3 Saloon” restaurant. The restaurant and museum were being opened in coordination with Merle’s family and his widow Theresa Haggard.
However, on February 5th, 2019 after many delays, the Johnny Cash Museum owner, Icon Entertainment’s Bill Miller, said the Merle Haggard concept would not be moving forward, and instead they would be opening “Johnny Cash’s Kitchen & Saloon.”
The Johnny Cash Museum is considered a landmark music museum, and was voted the best music museum in 2023, 2024, and 2025 in the USA Today Readers Poll. But the Patsy Cline Museum was rated #9 in the same 2025 poll, and it’s fair to ask if another expansion of the museum at the expense of Patsy Cline is equitable.
Perhaps if the Patsy Cline Museum was being more strongly supported by the public, we might not be seeing its shuttering. Obviously, Johnny Cash’s legacy looms large in American culture, but it’s not under threat of being forgotten like Patsy Cline’s could be.
After the closing of The George Jones Museum in 2021, this leaves Lower Broadway with only one true legend museum, along with the Country Music Hall of Fame a few blocks away. Meanwhile, we’re still awaiting word on the reopening of the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, if it will even be a record shop when it’s eventually unveiled at all.
– – – – – – – –
If you enjoyed this article, consider leaving Saving Country Music A TIP.
April 17, 2025 @ 11:15 am
My wife and I visited both museums and enjoyed each. Seeing the “Hurt” by Johnny Cash video at the end really affected my wife and helped her to connect with Johnny more.
I see the Patsy Cline Museum charges almost $25 for admission now (Johnny’s is $28), which I assume people who don’t know her legacy would not spend the money on it.
Hopefully they will re-locate it elsewhere and maybe lower the price. She is too big a giant of Country Music for folks to miss out on her story.
April 17, 2025 @ 12:34 pm
The admission for these museums is too high, and one of the reasons for that is the fact that few people pay it directly. Most people who visit these museums do so in either groups of seniors or students that are discounted, or Nashville tour packages where they never even see the ticket price, and it’s negotiated down with the tour company ahead of time. The actual costs to these people is probably somewhere between $12-$18. But if you’re walking along Lower Broadway and say, “Ohh, let’s check this out,” you’re going to get sticker shock, MIGHT pay for Johnny Cash, but are going to blow Patsy Cline off. It’s a bad business model for Patsy Cline.
April 17, 2025 @ 3:12 pm
The government gave a lot of money to the music museum NMAAM.
Since Nashville’s CVB and other government entities gave many millions of dollars to that one, does the CVB promote NMAAM over the other local music museums?
April 17, 2025 @ 4:27 pm
That’s a lot of acronyms to keep up with, but the short answer is that I don’t know. 🙂
Since the Johnny Cash Museum is for profit, my guess is they’re not getting any public funding.
April 18, 2025 @ 5:40 am
“blow Patsy cline off”
Who on their right mind would do that???
she is an amazing vocalist the best in my ppinion and a lot of other people who have heard her sing yhey say they she stops u in your tracks. I like Johnny Cash a lot too but me being a female and females can relate to her songsI’d probably go to see Patsy if I couldn’t pay to see both it definitely be Patsy od see. I know Johnny was around longer though so that makes him more popular it’s been around for years and years and years it’s too bad Patsy got killed in a plane crash which is really really really sad because she had nothing to do with no overdosing on drigs nothing did she do on purpose that contributed to her death.
April 18, 2025 @ 6:42 am
I 100% agree. I think Patsy Cline is an all-time country artist. I’m just saying that the random tourists on Lower Broadway there to get drunk may pat to see the “Hurt” guy’s old stuff, but not Patsy Cline displays for that sticker price.
April 17, 2025 @ 11:52 am
Bureaucracy is killing tradition at an alarming rate and the future of Country Music is bleak. There is no comparison between Patsy Cline’s traditional Honky Tonk style to one of the original outlaws of country music:Johnny Cash whose life story has been “cleaned” up for a “better” version of the man who sang “Folsom Prison” and “Jackson”. Money seems to be the root of evil in the “snake pit”(Austin Teutsch) of the music industry and I won’t stand to let traditional country music be marginalized and commercialized!
April 17, 2025 @ 12:04 pm
Well, per Ken Burn’s documentary, Cash was the central historical figure in country music’s history. Of course, I am being a bit factitious.
This closing is a shame. Man, the history we have lost.
April 17, 2025 @ 12:19 pm
Yeah. Little known one, there was a Glen Campbell museum, in Nashville,
and it too closed. George Jones museum closed.
Some years back, there was a Charlie Daniels museum as well, no surprise…it too closed. Museums can be a dicey proposition.
For those interested, their is a huge Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville which currently is open. A lot of great stuff in that one.
For the Patsy fans, you can drive to her old house and get a look at the outside, and there is a plaque in the yard. This was the house Willie pulled up in the driveway to shop Crazy to Patsy. Her husband, Charlie Dick drove Willie there, and Willie wanted to stay in the car! He did reluctantly go in, and Patsy didn’t like the song! All true. You can also drive to the site of Patsys plane crash.
April 18, 2025 @ 6:02 am
I would be going there for Patsy. Ove been two places in Texas about Willie Nelson history and Waylon which I like much better than willie.
April 17, 2025 @ 12:30 pm
That documentary acted like country music wouldn’t even exist without Cash.
Never let Yankee carpetbaggers tell country music’s story.
April 17, 2025 @ 12:29 pm
They will use the space for a June Carter wing.
April 17, 2025 @ 12:43 pm
The problem with the longevity of these museums directly downtown is the ever increasing price of parking and the competition among the other clubs that are catered to the Broadway day drinkers and party scene. Why can’t these museums reside in the Opryland area where tourists are aplenty and don’t have to pay for parking? They won’t have to compete with the 20-something binge drinkers and $50 parking prices.
April 17, 2025 @ 1:50 pm
Good idea Strait. There is a Willie Nelson museum and store next to The Nashville Palace, and a Dukes of Hazzard one next to that. And yes plenty of parking.
April 17, 2025 @ 2:11 pm
That area of Nashville is better suited for older tourists who are trying to find something to do at 10am when they wake up from their hotel room. Museums are almost an antiquated attraction today. In the 70’s or 80’s they had a Conway Twitty shop on Demonbraun St in Midtown Nashville. Now that area of town is mostly bars catered towards binge drinking locals. It’s a very boomer and older Gen X thing to go to museums and gift shops to buy trinkets and commemerative plates and then visit the Thomas Kinkade art exhibits and other crap the wife (who also has a conway twitty haircut) eventually had donated to Goodwill by the children after they passed because Millenials rightfully don’t care about figurines and commemerative plates and it’s just crap I have to filter thru in thrift shops while I am trying to find something of value and I’m just rambling now because the Zyn and coffee is hitting just right.
April 17, 2025 @ 11:00 pm
This the most pompous, judgemental and ageist language I’ve read in a long time. Lumping together personal opinions about entire generations, rather than objective information about places people visit.
April 18, 2025 @ 11:04 am
Sounds like your wife forced you to buy a bunch of stupid trinkets and lame mail order paintings in your house. 😂
April 17, 2025 @ 2:20 pm
I have been to that Dukes of Hazzard museum when I first visited Nashville 10+ years ago. It is understated today how much impact that show had on me and millions of others as a kid and how that introducted so many people to Country music in a new way. In that same large parking lot there is the Music City Bar and Grill that has only real country music played by the bands there. On sunday nights Robbie Turner is playing bass – He is also a steel player who played a lot of the fast steel guitar playing on Dukes of Hazzard.
April 17, 2025 @ 3:05 pm
Oh I wish you hadn’t leaked that secret out Strait. Music City Bar and Grill is my top secret go to place. It’s mostly locals who hang there mixed with some bikers. But it’s a whos who of pickers. I do not want it to get ruined the way Broadway has. Shhhhhhhhhhh…..let’s just keep this quiet.. mmmmmkay?
April 17, 2025 @ 5:52 pm
The Music City Bar and Grill usually posts their weekly schedule on their FB page on Mondays. Someone could make a good playlist just from those acts. The Nashville Palace is good, too. A wild card I’ll throw in for visitors to the Music Valley/Opry area is the Bavarian Bierhaus in the mall. Some of the musicians who play polka there also play in country bands like Alan Jackson’s.
April 17, 2025 @ 2:47 pm
The Willie Nelson Museum is now “The Legends of Country Music Museum” per their new sign. Don’t know when it changed but it was still Willie last year.
April 17, 2025 @ 4:29 pm
I agree that Music Valley would be a good location for these kinds of establishments, though the Fiddler’s Inn is getting pretty ghetto these days. The Ernest Tubb bus is still stuck in one of the buildings of the strip mall. That’s a good place to star building a museum as any.
April 17, 2025 @ 12:46 pm
Tough crowd. How’s museum attendance around the country in general?
April 17, 2025 @ 1:06 pm
I think attendance at real museums–the Met, the Museum of Natural Histoy and MOMA in New York; the Field and Art Institute in Chicago; Fine Arts and Harvard in Boston; the Getty in L.A.; the Smithsonian in D.C.; the Phila. Museum (with the “Rocky” steps); and a lot of smaller, speciallized museums is doing well.
April 17, 2025 @ 1:44 pm
They need a Jason Isbell museum.
April 17, 2025 @ 2:12 pm
There isn’t a building large enough to use that ego.
April 17, 2025 @ 2:12 pm
and they deny you entry if you answered incorrectly on your political beliefs hahaha
April 17, 2025 @ 2:48 pm
His old teeth on display.
April 17, 2025 @ 3:47 pm
I have visited most of the museums in Nashville and everyone is a heck of a lot better than The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What a waste of money. I do think the price of admission is way too high in all of them.
April 17, 2025 @ 6:01 pm
key west is becoming much more “country” in its music scene.
and tourists flock there & then look for something to do.
my s-i-l said duval street is more interesting/quirky than nashville’s main drag.
key west has miile 0 fest, singer-songwriters fest, and many touring acts at its amphitheater and many small bars with music from noon on.
and a couple years ago the mile 0 fest people put on an all-female key western fest.
plus key west has the “tourist development council” that throws dough to support music.
April 18, 2025 @ 8:21 am
Sad news. Patsy Cline is integral to the history of Country Music. The museum was not cheap to visit and neither is the Cash museum. Expensive to visit both. Both well worth a visit. I thought the Cash museum in particular was excellent. The Country Music Hall of Fame is well worth a visit although on my last visit, I was disappointed with the lack of exhibits for some of the greats such as Hank Williams. I suppose to get the money in, they have to focus on more of the newer acts but some of those featured was surprising. I hope the exhibits for Patsy Cline can be found a new home.
April 18, 2025 @ 10:06 pm
I walked them streets and played on many of the stages from Tootsies on down the line played many game of pool with Porter Wagner Waylon Jennings Kris Kristoferson Charley Dickey & Du Lynn I can’t believe the museums that has come and gone if Nashville really cared about being Country Music Capital they would not charge a penny and be proud of that but it’s all about money now I haven’t been back to Music row in 20 years and from what I’ve been reading I don’t want to go i don’t have a lot of time left and would like to visit it one more time but I don’t believe I could afford it I guess I’ll just close my eyes and visit the museum in my head
April 19, 2025 @ 12:33 am
The article doesn’t mention it but the Johnny Cash bar next to the museum is permanently closed too. It’s been redone as Show Pony.
April 19, 2025 @ 11:56 am
Hopefully, the Patsy Cline museum can reopen at a new location.
April 22, 2025 @ 6:53 am
It makes sense that a rockabilly artist (Cash) is bigger in Nashville than a traditional country artist (Cline).
Yes, she went pop, like Cash embraced hippie folk and later garage rock, but she statted out as a traditional hillbilly singer, unlike Cash, who never was country, no matter what David Allan Coe wants us to believe.
And most important; she didn’t record a cover of a suicidal emo song written by country legend Trent Reznor.
No wonder she’s wiped off the Nashcash platter.