Dolly Parton at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on May 19, 2025 in Nashville.Credit : Jason Kempin/Getty

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Dolly Parton celebrated her new exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
The country icon made a visit to the Nashville museum, seeing how it’s traced her life from “the top of the Smoky Mountains to the top of the world”
“It’s wonderful that I have been able to see my little girl dreams come true,” she told guests

Dolly Parton’s vast and enduring career is now the subject of a museum exhibit in Nashville, and the country icon showed up on Monday night to christen the new attraction.

“I think it’s wonderful that I have been able to see my little girl dreams come true,” Parton, 79, told several hundred invited guests during the opening reception at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

She was, of course, talking about her life — packed with groundbreaking accomplishments in every decade —but she might as well have been talking about the exhibit, as well.

With artifacts and storytelling, it exquisitely shows how no one has proven more formidable in any of the roles she’s undertaken: songwriter, artist, actor, producer, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Dolly Parton at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on May 19, 2025 in Nashville.Jason Kempin/Getty

And no one has come any farther or worked any harder than Parton to achieve her success.

“It’s a long ways from the top of the Smoky Mountains to the top of the world,” she said during her remarks, “and I’m so grateful because it didn’t come without sacrifice.”

She quoted from her 2011 song “The Sacrifice,” set to be part of the score in her upcoming Broadway-bound musical, Hello, I’m Dolly: “Grindstones and rhinestones have made up my life / and you ask, was it worth the sacrifice?”

“Well, I reckon it was, because I’m here tonight!” Parton answered, adding, “and I’m thankful for every person that’s ever helped me.”

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More than anything, though, it’s her own grit that powered her trajectory from her humble beginnings, and that’s the story the exhibit has chosen to tell.

“People just think it was easy for her — that she’s so talented and so charismatic,” says exhibit co-curator Michael McCall, the museum’s associate director of editorial. “But she had to fight every single step of the way against somebody who told her not to do that.”

Dolly Parton artifacts at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on May 19, 2025 in Nashville.Jason Kempin/Getty

The battle began in her youngest days, growing up in the backwoods of east Tennessee as one of 12 children, the daughter of a sharecropper and a homemaker. Her vocal talents were identified early on, and a musician uncle took her under his wing. As the exhibit shows, they teamed up to score her first major victory, a debut on the Grand Ole Opry when she was only 13.

The Opry manager originally nixed the appearance — saying she was too young — but Parton and her uncle, Bill Owens, went around him, persuading Jimmy C. Newman to give up one of his slots on the bill.

“I sang a George Jones song and got an encore,” she recalled in a quote featured in the exhibit. “I thought, ‘Boy, this is just great!’ Then I got another encore. I thought that was even greater!”

Says McCall: “She was not taking no for an answer.”

As the exhibit reveals, Parton continued to defy that word as she faced obstacle after obstacle, even long after she’d achieved stardom. Naysayers arrived at nearly every step: when she decided to end her professional partnership with Porter Wagoner, a bigger star at the time; when she chose to bring pop sounds into her country music; when she set her sights on acting; when she wanted to start her east Tennessee theme park, Dollywood.

Among the hardest pushes against her, McCall notes, were efforts to get her to abandon her singular fashion sense. He quotes influential producer Chet Atkins’ early counsel: “You gotta tone it down. People aren’t gonna take you seriously.” Years later, Atkins came back to Parton with his tail between his legs: “Aren’t you glad you followed my advice?”

Dolly Parton at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on May 19, 2025 in Nashville.Jason Kempin/Getty

Even now, McCall reveals, Parton hears comments about her appearance. She told the curator, “‘They still fight me about how I look. They still think, well, you’re older now, you should just tone it down.’ She goes, ‘I’m not gonna tone it down now!’”

A lavish selection of Parton’s sartorial style is on display in the exhibit, all adorning custom-made mannequins — many provided by the entertainer herself — to accommodate her bountiful figure. Among the highlights: the sherbet-orange polyester sheath dress she wore on the cover of her 1967 debut album, the cowgirl outfit she wore in the fantasy sequence in the 1980 hit comedy 9 to 5, and the turquoise fringed suede skirt and lamé top that she wore to be inducted into Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999.

Other one-of-a-kind artifacts are sure to capture visitors’ attention, including the original pencil-written lyrics to “Jolene”; the portable cassette recorder that Parton used to first record that song and “I Will Always Love You”; and Parton’s personal script for Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Dolly Parton at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on May 19, 2025 in Nashville.Jason Kempin/Getty

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McCall was able to confirm one of the many famous tales told about Parton that have reached mythological height. She did indeed accidentally smash her car into RCA’s now-legendary Studio B when she arrived for her first recording session there in 1967.

“Not only that,” says McCall, “but she goes, ‘I still have the keys.’”

Hanging from their same key ring, adorned with a leather “Dolly” strap, the set of Chevy station wagon keys is now part of the exhibit. (The wall, which sustained a nick, was soon dubbed “the Great Wall of Dolly” by Atkins, McCall adds.)

Dolly Parton’s keychain.Jason Kempin/Getty

Clearly the museum has benefited from Parton’s penchant to hold onto keepsakes. Her expansive wardrobe and other possessions are now preserved in storage in Nashville and at Dollywood, and that’s where Parton also will be drawing from for her own museum, she made clear during her remarks Monday night.

Housed in what will become her SongTeller Hotel in downtown Nashville, it’s set to open next spring, she said.

“So I’m sure that the Country Music Hall of Fame and we’re gonna be good neighbors,” Parton said, adding with a chuckle, “I did kind of cheat them a bit. I held on to some of my major things — but I was happy to share!”

Dolly Parton’s dresses at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on May 19, 2025 in Nashville.Jason Kempin/Getty

The exhibit, “Dolly Parton: Journey of a Seeker,” continues through September 2026, and entry is included with the price of museum admission. A companion book that features historical photographs and artifacts from the exhibit is available on the museum’s website and at its store.