NASHVILLE – Dolly Parton's niece Rebecca Seaver has a favorite place inside the Life of Many Colors Museum: a rocking chair beneath wooden beams made to match those in the Tennessee mountain home where Parton was born.
It is a small, quiet corner in a museum built to sparkle. A place where the woman known for rhinestones, hit songs and larger-than-life dreams feels close enough to sit beside visitors, at least in spirit.
Seaver, the museum's curator, worked hand-in-hand with Parton to build the space around the story of her aunt's life. In the cabin, a vitrine holds the work boots and lunchbox that belonged to Parton's father, Robert "Lee" Parton, and the pocket Bible that belonged to the songwriter's mother, Avie Lee Parton. A feed-sack dress
evokes what Avie Lee may have worn while pregnant with Dolly.
The chair is part of a recreation of the family's mountain home. But for Seaver, it also feels like an invitation to imagine Dolly there: resting, dreaming, perhaps turning a memory into a song.
Seaver said that her aunt would have liked it, too.
Nearly everything inside the 20,000-square-foot museum on the third floor of Parton's SongTeller Hotel offers a similar connection: a "Coat of Many Colors," original handwritten music, wedding-day photos of Parton and her late husband, Carl Dean, all 52 of her studio albums and plenty of spangly jewelry.
For Dolly fans, it feels like a place to honor and feel close to the country music icon who died Aug. 25 at 80.
"I'm so proud of it. I'm so excited. I'm so proud of her," Seaver says. "But it's hard. She's not here to open it. And I thought she would be, so that's tough."
Parton was supposed to see the museum come to life and cut the ribbon herself. But she left her fingerprints – manicured nails and all – throughout the museum.
She and Seaver chose the pink on the walls and the glitter running through stretches of the epoxy floor. Rhinestones catch the light from costumes behind glass, while that legendary voice follows visitors from room to room through videos recorded for the museum.
And there are butterflies. So many glorious monarch-shaped decorations to honor the Queen of Country.
During a recent walkthrough, someone spotted a real butterfly fluttering outside a window. Seaver's cousin Jada had told the family to watch for the winged creatures after Parton's death: "Watch out because she is unbound and untethered now."
"I feel like she's just here," Seaver says.
How the Dolly Parton museum went from plain concrete to brilliant colors
The space lacked sparkle and character when Seaver and Parton's creative director, Steve Summers, first walked the floor.
Previous tenants included offices and a bank. Standing amid the concrete, Seaver and Summers began envisioning its metamorphosis from a drab commercial space into a dazzling dreamscape.
"It was just concrete and you could see from one end all the way to the other," Seaver says. "Steve and I stood there and we just said, where does this start and how do we set up this story?"
The team spent about two years answering that question. Parton had specific artifacts she wanted displayed, including a favorite pearl dress, her "He's Alive" dress and costumes from movies including "9 to 5," "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and "Rhinestone." Experiential design firm AOA helped build out the vision.
The idea took shape as Seaver and Parton were opening the Dolly Parton Experience at Dollywood in 2024.
The two had quietly discussed what could come next for Parton's enormous archive. Seaver knew her aunt had wanted a museum in Nashville for a very long time. Then Parton called.
"Hey, I bought a building downtown," Seaver remembers her aunt saying. For a moment, Seaver worried her Aunt Dolly meant she would have to turn three floors of the building into a museum.
"Then she said, 'But it's going to be a hotel, and I want the museum to be on the third floor,'" Seaver recalls. "And I said, 'Oh, OK, we could do that.'"
A winter night in Tennessee and the birth of Dolly Parton
The first question was where to begin. The answer: Jan. 19, 1946, the night Parton was born during a winter storm.
Guests enter on Third Ave. north of Broadway, then ride an elevator to a check-in area and a room where a television is framed by golden butterflies.
Parton appears in a pre-show video.
"Welcome to my Life of Many Colors," she tells patrons. "I'm glad you're here."
She invites guests through her memories and dreams, turning back the clock.
"My story begins on a cold and stormy night in the Great Smoky Mountains," Parton says.
The door opens into winter.
The Tennessee Mountain Home section drops visitors into that January snowstorm. The cabin includes family photographs, the rocking chair and other artifacts representing her parents and childhood. A sewing machine and the famous "Coat of Many Colors" story round out the world of Parton's early years.
Even the beams overhead were exacting. Seaver and a designer traveled to East Tennessee to match the wood used in the recreation.
“I'm a very detailed person,” Seaver says.
From there, the museum follows Parton to Nashville.
A writing room is modeled after the bay window at Parton's home where she liked to write. Handwritten lyrics are suspended overhead, while framed music sheets and lyrics line the walls.
Her business acumen enters the story early. Parton's first publishing company, started in 1967 with her uncles, is represented along with contracts, including her first RCA recording contract displayed beneath her glass desk.
"We wanted to establish that she was a businesswoman, first and foremost, even before being a showgirl," Seaver says.
The environments shift with the chronology, turning each chapter into its own stage set. Visitors move from a replica office past a stained-glass church steeple framing photos of Parton and her husband to a movie theater, a Dollywood section that looks plucked from the theme park and a tour bus.
"We wanted to make sure that her bus was represented in the exhibit because she loves traveling – I can't speak about her in past tense, I just won't do it," Seaver says. "But traveling was Dolly's most favorite pastime. So we wanted to make sure the bus was on here. We even have her and Steve up here in the little shadows, so it kind of animates a little bit of them working up on the bus, getting ready."
Screens play previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage alongside archival photos of Parton on the road. A dulcimer she toured with in the '70s and '80s sits near a photo of her holding it beside Cher. Costumes from the "Blue Smoke" and "Pure & Simple" tours appear nearby, while an interactive wall traces her performances from the 1960s through her final work.
"I think if she needed somewhere to sit and be, and be maybe creative for a little while, that she would love to sit inside the bus because it does feel very comfortable and it feels like her," Seaver says.
Dolly Parton speaks to visitors through 'Dollygrams'
In the spring, the "dreamer-in-chief" filmed the videos that now guide visitors through the museum. Seaver dubbed the screens "Dollygrams."
Parton changes jackets in each video donning a custom-made and bedazzled fit. The jackets are now stored in her archive, and Seaver says she is already imagining how to reunite them for a future exhibit.
In the dressing room, a three-paneled vanity mirror turns into a screen, with different versions of Parton appearing in each pane and interacting with one another. The timing is exact, making the three recorded performances feel like one conversation.
"She's such a pro on stuff like this that it was just like two-take Dolly," Seaver said. "Most of the time, one take, but sometimes we would need a safety take, just in case."
Having Parton appear throughout the experience was something Seaver wanted from the beginning. She remembers how visitors to the former Chasing Rainbows Museum at Dollywood loved an attic pre-show where Parton appeared and joked with guests. When the museum changed, fans told Seaver how much they missed it.
"I took that to heart when we opened this space and said, 'OK, well, I want this to feel like the attic all the way throughout,'" Seaver says.
The Book Lady and Dolly Parton's touching message to fans
The most colorful room in the museum – if that's possible – belongs to the Imagination Library.
Books cover the walls and frame a circular entrance for children. A train chugs around the perimeter of the room with a Dolly conductor doll aboard. Displays hold a set of the original books distributed when Parton's book-gifting program began, along with the little train bookends used with them. Seaver made sure the circular children's entrance was wheelchair accessible. There's also a small stage and book nooks for reading.
The room is meant to host authors, guest readers, book signings and children's birthday parties.
"Museums are supposed to be like a community space too, not just about the things that are in the cases," Seaver says.
The chronological journey ends inside a theater. Guests line up outside before entering. Photography and video are prohibited inside. "I Will Always Love You" plays before the show. As the door opens to rows of purple-gray seating, a box of Kleenex waits for any visitors who might need it.
"It's a heartbreaker, but it's really sweet," Seaver says, describing the final video.
Parton filmed the concert this spring specifically for the museum. The performance, a medley of several songs, is the finale to the chronological walk through her life.
Outside the theater, glowing iridescent butterfly wings offer the final photo op. Records line the walls as visitors move through the remaining galleries and eventually toward the museum shop. The Life of Many Colors Museum opens to the public Sept. 29 in downtown Nashville. Tickets can be purchased in advance online for $31.99 for guests 13 and older.
"Our hope when we were creating this was that we would inspire joy and that we would give people courage to follow their dreams," Seaver says. "I think her story on its own does that. It doesn't need the museum for that, but I think this will be a little help to make people feel very close to her."
Parton once described herself as being "as old as yesterday, but as new as tomorrow." The museum holds both: the life she lived and the ideas she wished would outlast her.
Seaver doesn't try to imagine exactly what Parton would say after seeing it.
"I just hope that she would be proud and happy," the devoted niece says.
Bryan West is a music reporter at The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow him on Instagram, TikTok and X as @BryanWestTV.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Dolly Parton's niece goes behind the scenes at icon's new Nashville museum | Exclusive
