The Museum of Pop Culture’s mission is to make creative expression a life-changing force by offering experiences that inspire and connect our communities.
MoPOP Member Moments: Glen Beebe
As part of our celebration honoring 20 years of the Museum of Pop Culture, we'll take time throughout 2020 to get to know some of MoPOP's most dedicated visitors and supporters.
MoPOP members receive some pretty cool perks, but perhaps more importantly, each member's continued support of our nonprofit museum helps fund our world-class exhibitions and community programming. This month we hear from Glen Beebe, who is one of many aiding MoPOP's mission of making creative expression a life-changing force.
How long have you been a member and what initially drew you to MoPOP?
Glen: I've been a member with MoPOP since it started. I'm a charter member. I'm in it for the music and the fact that MoPOP provides so much access to aspects of the music, particularly Northwest music. It's been really great and it's just something I want to support. I think it was just because it was a music museum, it intrigued me. The fact that it was Northwest based was interesting. It wasn't a national type of a focus. It was going to be tightly focused here in the Northwest and the fact that it was going to have this really weird encapsulation of it with the architecture, it's just all intriguing and it just seemed like a good thing to jump in on.
In your 20 years as a MoPOP member, what's been one of your most memorable experiences?
Glen: In the original EMP they had a Northwest section downstairs and they had an album for The Sonics. Anybody remembered The Sonics from their second album, Boom, and not only did I have that album, but I worked with and I know the designer who did the graphic sign, a guy named Zane Baker. ... That one has always stuck with me. In the same exhibit I think, there was a The Doors poster there, kind of pink and green, we're talking really great colors. I believe it was the 1967 Eagles Auditorium concert poster and done by a great, unheralded poster artist, John Moerhing, who recently passed a year ago. I got to meet him, become friends with him. It's really one of those amazing type of things where something happens (at MoPOP) and it becomes significant way down the road. So that was a pretty interesting.
Why is it so important to you to support that local music scene?
Glen: Without music, there isn't life. It'd be dull, boring. Music makes memories. Where you are when you heard the song. Where you heard the band live. Music is the best and this is a great place to come it. I've come for a good number of shows in Sky Church. A great opportunity. It's big enough that you're not crowded and it's small enough that you're right there in the action. It's really great. Music makes life and it's like the soundtrack to your existence in your life. Music tastes change. I've never thrown any music out. I've just kept adding styles and types of music. So music is important just because not only is it just an artform it, but it personalizes life for each of us. It's the pulse.
What do you tell people about MoPOP who might not know a lot about it?
Glen: Basically I tell them, "You gotta go. You gotta go see this. This is the only place you're going to see this." So if you're in Seattle, if there are people who are visiting, either I get them to go down here or I take them down here. It's one of the things that I like doing is to bring friends, family's all been. It's really, really eclectic. Growing up is totally overrated and you really have to always maintain the kid. You don't give that up. Be able to see life through a child's eyes because everything's fun and if you start taking the world too seriously, it really is a bummer. So you really have to have fun with it. Fun with the world, fun with people.
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