Exhibits and immersive spaces throughout the museum are designed to provide a meaningful and engaging experience for visitors with a wide range of knowledge about—and interest in—Bob Dylan. An immersive multimedia space acts as a common introduction to museum, establishing a baseline for all visitors. Large photographs and quotes from Bob Dylan underscore over-arching themes for visitors who prefer to skim through the museum’s collection, while digital interactives invite users to dive more deeply into the stories and history of specific items on display. Due to Dylan’s prolific creative output and the constantly changing collection of materials, spaces throughout the museum are designed for ease of updating, allowing exhibits to evolve as new stories and artifacts come to light.

The interior architecture approach framed the existing historic building as a found object, celebrating its unique properties and allowing these existing conditions to inform the design. This approach avoided intensive and unnecessary structural changes, limiting these changes to an added staircase and a removed wall. Existing interior columns, typically a problematic element in a gallery space, provided a functional armature for dual-sided exhibit cases in the Six Songs area.

The exhibits employ a range of multi-sensory techniques for engaging visitors, inviting them to read, listen, touch, and interact with elements throughout the Bob Dylan Center, as directed by their own curiosity. Through interactive areas such as a chalkboard wall and a magnetic poetry wall, visitors are invited to contribute their own perspective to the center, creating a living exhibit that reflects the voice of the visitor.

The new Bob Dylan Center is also the home of the Bob Dylan Archive. Though the Archive itself is closed to the public due to conservation and security concerns, an expansive gallery wall effectively turns this protected space inside-out, showcasing a rotating selection of items from the collection within 94 display cases. A digital interactive platform further allows visitors to learn more about the history and importance of any of the items on display.