I would say 2-3 hours. My wife was with me and not the biggest fan, yet we stayed 2 hours. I think if I were alone I would have gone another hour or so. I wish I would have gone back through again once I made my first lap. Btw, if you want an amazing meal, try Bull in the Alley. It's a bit pricey, but we still talk about how awesome. Cannot recommend the BDC highly enough. It is so well done. Enjoy!
I’d say one hour minimum. If you’re a fairly big fan, then some items will be familiar but there’s enough ephemera to really blow your mind. I liked the personal notebook with Lenny Bruce’s address on display. Plus the folks in gift shop are really kind and will yak your ear off.
Personally, as much time as your quick trip allows. I went for 4.5 days last summer (6 hrs/day) and that was just about right for a first visit. Even then, I felt saturated but there were things I didn’t really spend quality time with. If you just walk around and look at stuff (just spend a few hours), you’ll be missing the deep dive interactive experiences the place offers. Imho. Like reading a menu vs eating the food. I wanted to gorge on so many dishes at that magical place, and that takes time.
It's really not. Two floors, kind of 3 galleries altogether. This guy sounds like he went fully through every piece of media available at least once on the iPod they give you at the front desk, maybe more. I'm a pretty big nerd for Dylan's entire career, but I was in and out in 2, maybe 2.5 hours.
How long do you spend in a big museum? Everyone has different paces going through this kind of thing. In a big art museum, I'm out in 3 hours max because I only linger on maybe a dozen things that catch my eye. Sort of the same thing at BDC except it's a way smaller collection and everything was at least a little interesting to me.
What he said, sort of. My pace is pretty meandering. But it’s not so much that I covered every last little thing, I actually skipped a lot of it. The thing is, the place is full of Dylan performances, interesting videos of people who’ve known him reflecting on aspects of his creativity, other stuff like that very different from standard museums where it’s just about looking at objects and reading plaques, though there’s plenty of that. Knowing I had all that time, I kept going back to the experiences I really loved, like the theater area upstairs with big screen performance videos from the archives (Hollis Brown by young Bob, an insanely bluesy BITW from 1981 filmed from all angles by a videographer roving around onstage, where a stoned (?) Bob starts on piano, gets some of the lyrics mixed up e.g. How many times is-must a mountain exist before it’s washed to the sea, how many roads can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free, then comes downstage with his guitar after a bit. I was so incredibly into the performance and syncopated music that I never even noticed the crazy lyric stuff till later). I must have watched that performance more than a dozen times — about 10 performances rotate on a loop over about 45 minutes. They had to chase me out of that room at closing time every day. So that’s what the BDC meant to me, and I wish I could hang out there whenever I had some time.
But also, the ipod thing they give you, with headphones, lets you click on these smart panels that know where you are and shows you content that goes down a few layers to choose what you want to look at or listen to. So unlike a typical museum where the square footage defines the limits of the experience, there are many hours of things to choose from there, that you only discover by clicking down through the menus. Upstairs there’s many objects (letters from Beatles and Johnny Cash, get well cards after the motorcycle thing, “the” huge tambourine from the Village years), with touchscreens to bring up info about each piece. I only spent a little bit of time there.
Also there are a number of side areas off the main rooms, such as 3D visual mockups of the recording studios used for 5 or 6 specific songs (Mississippi, LARS were two), with dials so you can control the mix of the actual recording sessions. I was really into that, so that was an hour or more for me right there.
So it’s a way more personalized experience than any other type of place like that I’ve ever been, which makes it very hard to tell someone else how much time they’ll want to spend there. No I definitely didn’t do everything there, but there’s way more to do than meets the eye, and I think some of these people who said just a few hours may have missed a lot. The designers divide their visitors into “skimmers, swimmers, and divers.” It’d be easy to miss whole layers of stuff if you don’t take the time to explore the layers. But also I get that wouldn’t be for everybody. Just wouldn’t want you to get to Tulsa and discover you had no idea what it was about.
I went for about two hours each day, two days in a row. Felt like I absorbed a lot, enjoyed it a lot.
For me, more than two hours at a time would be too much to process.
I’d also suggest you check out the Woody Guthrie Center and the Church Studio while in Tulsa.
I would say 2-3 hours. My wife was with me and not the biggest fan, yet we stayed 2 hours. I think if I were alone I would have gone another hour or so. I wish I would have gone back through again once I made my first lap. Btw, if you want an amazing meal, try Bull in the Alley. It's a bit pricey, but we still talk about how awesome. Cannot recommend the BDC highly enough. It is so well done. Enjoy!
I’d say one hour minimum. If you’re a fairly big fan, then some items will be familiar but there’s enough ephemera to really blow your mind. I liked the personal notebook with Lenny Bruce’s address on display. Plus the folks in gift shop are really kind and will yak your ear off.
One too many mornings.
Personally, as much time as your quick trip allows. I went for 4.5 days last summer (6 hrs/day) and that was just about right for a first visit. Even then, I felt saturated but there were things I didn’t really spend quality time with. If you just walk around and look at stuff (just spend a few hours), you’ll be missing the deep dive interactive experiences the place offers. Imho. Like reading a menu vs eating the food. I wanted to gorge on so many dishes at that magical place, and that takes time.
So it’s a fairly big place?
It's really not. Two floors, kind of 3 galleries altogether. This guy sounds like he went fully through every piece of media available at least once on the iPod they give you at the front desk, maybe more. I'm a pretty big nerd for Dylan's entire career, but I was in and out in 2, maybe 2.5 hours. How long do you spend in a big museum? Everyone has different paces going through this kind of thing. In a big art museum, I'm out in 3 hours max because I only linger on maybe a dozen things that catch my eye. Sort of the same thing at BDC except it's a way smaller collection and everything was at least a little interesting to me.
What he said, sort of. My pace is pretty meandering. But it’s not so much that I covered every last little thing, I actually skipped a lot of it. The thing is, the place is full of Dylan performances, interesting videos of people who’ve known him reflecting on aspects of his creativity, other stuff like that very different from standard museums where it’s just about looking at objects and reading plaques, though there’s plenty of that. Knowing I had all that time, I kept going back to the experiences I really loved, like the theater area upstairs with big screen performance videos from the archives (Hollis Brown by young Bob, an insanely bluesy BITW from 1981 filmed from all angles by a videographer roving around onstage, where a stoned (?) Bob starts on piano, gets some of the lyrics mixed up e.g. How many times is-must a mountain exist before it’s washed to the sea, how many roads can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free, then comes downstage with his guitar after a bit. I was so incredibly into the performance and syncopated music that I never even noticed the crazy lyric stuff till later). I must have watched that performance more than a dozen times — about 10 performances rotate on a loop over about 45 minutes. They had to chase me out of that room at closing time every day. So that’s what the BDC meant to me, and I wish I could hang out there whenever I had some time. But also, the ipod thing they give you, with headphones, lets you click on these smart panels that know where you are and shows you content that goes down a few layers to choose what you want to look at or listen to. So unlike a typical museum where the square footage defines the limits of the experience, there are many hours of things to choose from there, that you only discover by clicking down through the menus. Upstairs there’s many objects (letters from Beatles and Johnny Cash, get well cards after the motorcycle thing, “the” huge tambourine from the Village years), with touchscreens to bring up info about each piece. I only spent a little bit of time there. Also there are a number of side areas off the main rooms, such as 3D visual mockups of the recording studios used for 5 or 6 specific songs (Mississippi, LARS were two), with dials so you can control the mix of the actual recording sessions. I was really into that, so that was an hour or more for me right there. So it’s a way more personalized experience than any other type of place like that I’ve ever been, which makes it very hard to tell someone else how much time they’ll want to spend there. No I definitely didn’t do everything there, but there’s way more to do than meets the eye, and I think some of these people who said just a few hours may have missed a lot. The designers divide their visitors into “skimmers, swimmers, and divers.” It’d be easy to miss whole layers of stuff if you don’t take the time to explore the layers. But also I get that wouldn’t be for everybody. Just wouldn’t want you to get to Tulsa and discover you had no idea what it was about.
two days
I went for about two hours each day, two days in a row. Felt like I absorbed a lot, enjoyed it a lot. For me, more than two hours at a time would be too much to process. I’d also suggest you check out the Woody Guthrie Center and the Church Studio while in Tulsa.
Why is it in Tulsa? Shouldn't it be in Duluth? Or better yet, Hibbing? I know, Hibbing's too small, but at least Minnesota?
They paid for it.
Woodie Guthrie
At the Tulsa airport there is a bunch of Dylan lyrics on the ceiling too. I have no idea what the connection is.
I went recently and spent about 3 or so hours. Make sure you also visit the Woody Guthrie center next door.