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Museum Hours

  • Monday: Closed
  • Tuesday: Closed
  • Wednesday: 10am-6pm
  • Thursday: 10am-6pm
  • Friday: 10am-6pm
  • Saturday: 10am-6pm
  • Sunday: 10am-6pm

We are closed on New Years Day, Memorial Day, Easter Sunday, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years Eve

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Motown Museum is the beating heart of the extraordinary Motown legacy—a destination that brings together people and ideas from different generations, and celebrates the past while simultaneously building a bridge to the future.

About Motown Museum

To ensure our vast collection maintains public visibility, and to keep things fresh for our guests, Motown Museum changes its main gallery exhibit 1-2 times per year. Here is what’s currently showing at our museum.

Current Exhibit

Motown Museum transports you into an era of musical magic. From the moment you step on the plaza, you’ll be immersed in the Motown sound and will experience a profound sense of history.

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Hitsville NEXT Programs

Our uniquely curated community programs emphasize education, entrepreneurship and equity—with experiences, mentoring and exposure that nurtures and elevates tomorrow’s history makers. Museum programs cultivate creativity and entrepreneurship in budding talent, allowing great art, big ideas and innovation to flourish.

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Lyric Project


Ages 14-18 | June 18 – 28

Lyric Project is a two-week workshop that helps students learn about songwriting, music production, and communicating powerful and authentic emotions through music...

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Ignite Summer Camp
application Open

Ignite Summer Camp


9 - 12 Grade | July 9 - 19

Ignite is a two-week program designed for high school-aged singers who want to take their musical talents to the next level...

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application Open

Spark Summer Camp


6 – 8 Grade | August 6 - 16

For middle-school students passionate about music, we offer Spark, a day camp that helps students write and perform music together...

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Events

From memorable galas and concert performances, to community celebrations and educational programs, we host a range of special events throughout the year.

All Events

AMPLIFY: The Sound of Detroit Grand Finale


March 16, 2024

Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts

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Private Events

Interested in hosting your own event at Motown?

Facility Rental

Motown Legacy

As an irresistible force of social and cultural change, the legendary Motown portfolio made its mark not just on the music industry, but society at large, with a signature Motown Sound that has become one of the most significant musical accomplishments and stunning success stories of the 20th century.

Discover The Legacy

Like many other African Americans in the early 20th century, Berry Gordy, Sr. and his wife, Bertha Fuller Gordy, came North from Georgia to find a better life for themselves and their family.

Gordy Family

Motown is an extended family of some of the most iconic and influential artists, musicians and songwriters of our time. Brought together by destiny through their love for making music, they found themselves making history.

Motown Artists

The culmination of years of planning, hard work and generous contributions from dedicated donors, the highly anticipated, $50 million Motown Museum expansion project will grow the museum campus to a 50,000-square-foot world-class entertainment and education tourist destination.

Expansion

Support Motown Museum

When you contribute to the Motown Museum, you become part of a rich musical and cultural legacy. We are a 501(c)(3) not for profit, tax-exempt organization in Detroit.

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Museum Hours

  • Monday: Closed
  • Tuesday: Closed
  • Wednesday: 10am-6pm
  • Thursday: 10am-6pm
  • Friday: 10am-6pm
  • Saturday: 10am-6pm
  • Sunday: 10am-6pm
Contact Us

Museum memberships are an investment in the preservation and conservation of our historic legacy. Become A Member

Berry Gordy

Born in 1929, Berry Gordy, Jr. was the seventh of Berry Gordy, Sr. and Bertha Fuller Gordy’s eight children. He tried many careers—boxing, record store ownership, assembly line worker and a tour in the U. S. Army during the Korean War—until he found a niche in the world of entertainment.

HIT-MAKING SONGWRITER

A gifted songwriter, Berry penned or co-wrote hits for Jackie Wilson, including “Reet Petite”, “Lonely Teardrops” and “To Be Loved”. Despite this success, Berry was not content to write songs: He burned with the entrepreneurial spirit, as was only natural for one of Berry, Sr. and Bertha’s children. With an $800 loan in hand from the Gordy Family’s Ber-Berry Co-op, Berry set out in 1959 to apply some of the principles he learned in the auto plant to the production of records and the creation of music groups and solo artists. He envisioned a process by which a “kid could walk in one door an unknown off the street and come out the other a polished performer”.

MOTOWN RECORDS FOUNDER

With a tenacity that reflected his training as a boxer, a drive to succeed that matched the lessons he learned from his parents, and an attention to detail that is evident in the quality and uniqueness of every element of the Motown experience, Berry built the Empire on West Grand Boulevard, known as Motown Records.

Motown Record Corporation was incorporated in April 1960, a year that produced Barrett Strong’s biggest hit, “Money (That’s What I Want),” for which Berry shared writing credits with Janie Bradford. The Miracles’ “Shop Around,” written by lead singer Smokey Robinson, was also released that year and reached #1 and #2, respectively, on the R&B national and Billboard pop charts.

When Berry purchased the two-family flat at 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, he moved his wife and young son into the upper unit and began to build his record company on the first floor. His energy and drive to reach his goal infected the growing Motown Records family as hit after hit emerged from Studio A, housed in a converted photography studio at the back of the house he soon dubbed Hitsville U.S.A.

TALENT DEVELOPER

Berry had a keen eye for talent as well. The list of his earliest discoveries reads like a who’s who of the golden age of rhythm-and-blues, starting with the Matadors (soon to become the Miracles), Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, and the Primes and Primettes, later to be known as the Temptations and the Supremes, respectively, to name only a few.

VISIONARY

True to his vision, Berry invested considerable time and thought into polishing Motown performers. The Artist Development Department taught them how to sit, stand and speak with elegance, and act with refinement—no matter the setting. Their performance “uniforms” and choreography were the envy of street-corner singers and competing vocal groups everywhere. No one could out-Motown a member of the Motown clan!

The same vision that conceived of Motown Records led Berry Gordy, Jr., into the movie industry in the 1970s. Although he had moved into a different medium, Berry’s eye for talent was evident in the casting of Billy Dee Williams opposite Diana Ross in two films, Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany. Hit movies followed his move to Los Angeles, with Motown artists, like Diana Ross and Michael Jackson starring in films Gordy produced, including the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, The Wiz.

THE CHAIRMAN

After years at the helm of Motown Records, Berry took the role of board chairman, allowing the younger generation an opportunity to lead the company into a new era. He sold the company in 1988, but his connection to the “Sound of Young America” is unbreakable and eternal.

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