Taylor Swift Breaks NSAI Record, To Open CMHoF Education Center

Taylor Swift accepts her Songwriter/Artist of the Year trophy from NSAI in 2011.

Taylor Swift will take home her record sixth NSAI award as Songwriter/Artist of the Year this Sunday (Oct. 13), and that award and many of her others will soon have a new home when the Taylor Swift Education Center opens inside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Saturday (Oct. 12). The new center was born out of a $4 million donation Swift pledged to the Hall in 2012 – the largest single donation by an artist in the museum’s 46 years.

The center gives the museum seven times more space for new programs and includes three classrooms and a learning lab, as well as an interactive children’s gallery slated to open next year. Kids will be able to test out a variety of instruments in the museum’s “petting zoo” and get messy doing Hatch Show letterpress art; future offerings planned include songwriting workshops, dance classes, and a Hatch Show-led letterpress program.

A big part of Swift’s musical story is intertwined with the Hall of Fame. She inked her record contract there as a teen, gave one of her first public performances on the building’s plaza, and has performed at several of the museum’s “All For The Hall” fundraisers. Her stand-alone, multi-media exhibit there has drawn crowds for years, and the exhibition on her Speak Now tour was the first-ever of its kind.

When she receives her sixth NSAI award on Sunday, Swift will have broken another record, surpassing five-time winners Alan Jackson and Vince Gill, and she’s also the youngest artist ever to have won the award at 17. The award is determined by chart performance and songwriting credits. Taylor’s six NSAI Awards will be on special display in the foyer of the new Education Center.