[Photos courtesy of Lucan Furio and Alice Falkowski]

By Rocco Prioletti, Editorial Director, Kate Tocke, PR Director, Jenell Taylor, Columns and Features Editor

On October 29, ACRN was invited to preview the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s brand-new 2025 Inductee Exhibit. The exhibit features an eclectic collection of artifacts from all 13 of this year’s Inductee Class. From Andre 3000’s iconic getup from Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” music video, to Jack and Meg White’s outfits from The White Stripes’ Icky Thump cover art — the collection has a wide variety of memorabilia to offer to all fans of music.

We spoke with Haley Cronin, the Assistant Curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, who curated Soundgarden’s artifacts within the exhibit. Cronin walked us through the process that the curators took to secure the various sought-after instruments, outfits and lyric sheets that make up this year’s exhibit.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

Rocco Prioletti (RP): What makes this year’s lineup of inductees specifically unique or exciting in comparison to years past?

Haley Cronin (HC): I think that it’s such a diverse range of genres being showcased. We have rap and hip-hop with Salt-N-Pepa. We have good old-fashioned rock and roll with Bad Company. We have grunge with Soundgarden. There’s something for everyone in this exhibit. I think we have done well with that in the past, like taking a diverse class, but this year, especially, it’s fairly prevalent. 

Kate Tocke (KT): What are some challenges you come across when it comes to curating this exhibit? 

HC: The challenges are representing each artist the way they want to be represented, and paying the most respect towards them in that way; you want to make sure you’re doing it right. Especially for those inductees who are deceased, it’s that much harder because you don’t get to talk to them about their vision and about how they want to be remembered. I’m Soundgarden’s curator, and Chris Cornell is deceased, unfortunately, so I had to work with the Cornell Estate, which was very lovely to work with. But you know, it is that missing piece, unfortunately, that I wish we had. 

Jenell Taylor (JT): Did you run into any snags for the specifics of it?

HC: I don’t believe so, no snags. A lot of years prior, [we] would be right up to the deadline with collecting artifacts because artists are very busy. If they’re touring, if they have other things to do, it’s hard to coordinate the shipping of artifacts. Or, if they’re going to hand-carry them to the museum. But this year, I think we got everything well before the deadline, which made everything easy for our exhibit’s team, who had to do prep, make mounts for the artifacts, install them, do lighting and everything. So, everything was done in a timely manner this time around. 

JT: Did you also work on the exhibit last year?

HC: Yes, I did! This is the first year that I was assigned my own inductees, because we, as curators, are assigned specific artists. We all have a list of inductees that we curate based on our expertise, if you will. So, I’m very much like [a fan of] punk, metal, grunge — that’s what I know a lot about. So, it was really cool for one of my first assigned inductees to be Soundgarden. But I did assist the other curators last year with their inductees, and that was really fun.

RP: Could you walk us through the process you’d go about contacting either estates or the individual artist to ask them what they’d be comfortable with including in the exhibit?

HC: At the Rock Hall, we have an internal database of artist contacts that we’ve accrued over time with our amazing people who have worked in Artist Relations here over many years. And what’s so cool about the Rock Hall is that the curatorial department and the Artist Relations side of the organization are very closely intertwined; we’re the ones doing a lot of the Artist Relations, because we contact them the most about artifacts and what have you. So, we’ll first get the contact from the internal database, and then as we go about asking them for artifacts, we always say we want to preserve your legacy, which is so important to us. We would love anything that’s what we call a primary artifact, which is something directly used, worn, [or] played by the artist. That’s what we go for most, and so we always ask for a primary artifact — whether it be an instrument, song lyrics. A lot of the time we’ll have two-dimensional artifacts that are handwritten notes or song lyrics; outfits, equipment, anything of that nature.

Sometimes, we’ll say, “If you have another idea of something you would like, please let us know.” For instance, the year Eminem was inducted, which [was] 2022, he gave us a plastic mold [of] the restaurant he created, like a little plastic ramen noodle that we could preserve.  Which was not in our collecting scope whatsoever. Like, how would you know to ask for that? It was representative of the restaurant he opened for his mother [called Mom’s Spaghetti]. I don’t know the exact story, because I’m not assigned to him. So, we can get cool artifacts like that that you wouldn’t even think to ask for, and it’s cool when you get to collaborate with the artist and they bring up good ideas.

JT: About the artifacts, is there a way that you’re able to ensure authenticity? Or, simply because it comes from the artists’ teams?

HC: Basically, yes, that is the main way that we know how we measure art. We try most of the time to get things directly from the artist or their estate, because with other collectors and whatnot, you never really know. But, I mean, that’s the job of us curators: we do the research to ensure that what we are getting, and what we are displaying, is authentic. So, if we don’t know right off the bat [that] it’s authentic, we’ll do that extra legwork. But yeah, when it comes from the artist teams, they’ll usually give us a wealth of information about the artifacts that we then use in the labels that we write.

KT: I know you specifically were assigned to Soundgarden. But do you have a favorite piece outside of Soundgarden for this? 

HC: The stuff we have for Cyndi Lauper is so cool, like the “Time After Time” lyrics, the “She Bop” lyrics. Unpacking that for the shipment and getting to see that when we were planning out the exhibit layout, we all had to kind of take a moment and be like, “Whoa.”

JT: That Grammy [on display]. Is that her Grammy, or is it a replica?

HC: It’s her Grammy! Yes. 

KT: Was she very willing to give that [away]?

HC: All of the inductees this year were super stoked to give us stuff. Cyndi Lauper was very busy this year with her Farewell Tour. So, it did take a little bit to finally get the stuff in-house, because, I mean, Cyndi Lauper, she is a star. She knows the way she wants to be represented in the exhibit, so she was very much integral in picking the pieces that we have on display right now. Which is really cool, because sometimes we’ll just get stuff that curators can say, “Oh, here’s this iconic piece. Do you still have it? Can we have it?” But she ended up choosing basically every piece that is in here. 

RP: Was there a favorite [item] from Soundgarden that, as a big fan, you were very excited to get? 

HC: It wasn’t something we actually got new, but we’ve had it for a while, and now it’s really spotlighted. It is Chris Cornell’s electric guitar. It’s so beautiful. It’s really cool to see the sticker on it that’s the original Soundgarden logo, the first band logo they ever used. It was on their EP Screaming Life, which was their debut release. And that’s what you can see on the big banner above the drum kit. So, it’s very cohesive how their little display turned out. We got a lot of stuff from the early period, plus the guitar we already have in-house. It just kind of creates this perfect [cohesion] together. You get so much of the late ‘80s, early ‘90s Seattle club scene, which people don’t get to hear about too often. Getting that little time capsule is insane. And again, as a fan, it was just overwhelming to get to see and touch in person. 

JT: Do you have anything extra you want to add that you might not have touched on?

HC: Yeah, the exhibit for the 2025 Induction Class is going to open on October 31, Halloween, to the public. So, everyone should stop by and check it out!