The MOPOP CEO on Jeanette Beckman, hip-hop history, and why pop culture deserves its flowers
Michele Y. Smith is the CEO of the Museum of Pop Culture (MOPOP) in Seattle, where she has spent years pushing back against the idea that pop culture doesn’t belong in serious museum spaces. A Philadelphia native who found her way into cultural leadership through Woodland Park Zoo and keynote stages in Australia and Singapore, Smith is now steering one of the most distinctive cultural institutions in the country toward something much bigger.
What made Rebels & Icons the right exhibition for this moment in the museum’s history?
In 2024, we defined who we were as a museum and we focused on the power of pop culture, which is our annual content theme. We put out a new exhibit exploring how pop culture shapes our perspectives, how it sparks conversations, and how it bridges the gap. We wanted to delve into iconic moments, trends, creators, and creations that have really left a lasting mark on our collective consciousness.
We focused on core pillars of activism, highlighting moments where pop culture has ignited dialogues and challenged the norms. Celebrities right now are using their platform for more of the political discourse that’s going on. We also wanted a global lens, looking beyond American pop culture and exploring how pop culture serves as a universal language connecting people worldwide.
We focused on preservation too and our dedicated effort to preserve the history of pop culture. History right now is being erased and we wanted to honor stories that challenge the traditional norms of museum worthiness. A lot of people were saying that pop culture wasn’t scholarly or academic, and so we wanted to challenge those preconceptions and recognize pop culture in its rightful place as a significant source of insight and cultural exploration.
What do Jeanette’s photographs say about art’s role in preserving stories mainstream culture tries to ignore?
With Jeanette Beckman, she shows the contributions to music and culture through photography that captures the essence of punk and hip-hop moments. The exhibit features 150 works and highlights figures like The Clash, Run-D.M.C., and LL Cool J, reflecting their influence on fashion, identity, and rebellion.
MOPOP, since we opened in 2000, has been one of the largest collectors of hip-hop in the world, and we were one of the first museums to recognize hip-hop as a genre, as an art form, as an exhibit. In 2023, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. When hip-hop was formed in 1970, people were not even thinking of it as a genre to be recognized 50 years later. Having that large exhibit really reflects on the genre of underrepresented and marginal communities, giving them their flowers of what they have come so far from 1970 to 2026.
When you walk through Rebels & Icons, is there a particular moment that stops you every time?
Jeanette Beckman is focused on the youth, the creators and innovators that are going to be the next Michael Jacksons or Salt-N-Pepas of the world. She focuses on activism. She has some of the first pictures of LL Cool J and Run-D.M.C., and photos of Keith Haring and his time focusing on LGBTQ rights. So there’s something for everyone in the exhibit.
She’s spending time here with our youth advisory board, which has interpreted the exhibit in its own way, and she’s doing workshops and educational classes. She’s also focusing on voter registration. All of it encompassed in the weekend we opened really enhances the experience of community engagement and dialogue around this exhibit to explore the intersections of art, culture, and social justice.
Who is MOPOP for, and how does an exhibition like this speak to the audiences you most want to reach?
We are multigenerational. We’ve really been focusing on how arts and culture are being taken out of schools and how we educate in a different way. We have a teacher advisory board that talks about how they explain history to a neurodivergent class that’s learning about pop culture but also history at the same time.
We have the 1969 Stratocaster guitar that Jimi Hendrix was playing at Woodstock during the time of civil rights. We have the largest Jimi Hendrix collection. Paul Allen was a big fan. Depending on what state you’re in, you may have a book in history or you may not. We’re trying to bridge that cultural literacy gap with pop culture.
Our goal is for everyone to walk away and go read a book, learn more, and really take the time to form their own opinion. We want to highlight important moments in history that may or may not be in libraries or schools, depending on what state you are in.
As a woman leading one of the most distinctive cultural institutions in the country, do you see a connection between Jeanette’s story and your own?
I am from an under-marginalized community. I’m from Philadelphia. I went to a boarding school in Hershey that afforded me the opportunity to look at art, culture, and all those things. I told myself that if I ever became the CEO of a large institution, I wanted to focus on what wasn’t given to me as a student or what was underrepresented for myself.
I know that Black and brown girls look up to me for inspiration, and I try to model the behavior that I’m looking to serve. It wasn’t easy getting to where I am. It still isn’t. There is still racism in everything that I do and where I go, show up, and represent. I am sometimes the only Black woman in the room. I want to make sure that the people who come after me feel confident in the space in telling their narrative and not bordering down their stories of who they are and what they represent.
After Rebels & Icons, what kinds of stories is MOPOP most hungry to tell next?
We focus on four pillars. Fashion, film, gaming, and music. We build our exhibits from scratch and then travel them around the world. That’s how we get the global perspective, that’s how we get the scholarly perspective.
In September, we have an exhibit called Style by the Streets, which is women in hip-hop and feminism. Really talking about the hair, the nails, the grills, getting a little more into feminism and women and hip-hop. In November, we have Puget Sound Stories. We most recently had a long-term exhibit, Nirvana, here for 14 years, and we closed it last year because the lenders wanted their stuff back. We wanted to tell more of what makes up the Puget Sound stories. It’s not just grunge, it’s jazz, it’s Jimi Hendrix, there are a lot of people that have not been told in those stories.
We most recently worked with Ruth Carter and had her exhibits around Wakanda and Afrofuturism. K-pop might be one we work on in the future. We have a jewelry exhibit coming up. We have an interactive in our current exhibit asking visitors what is on their mind in pop culture. Right now, K-Pop Demon Hunters is there, Chappell Roan, so you never know. We’re able to download the insights and see what’s on the guest and visitor’s mind to help inform where we go next.
Where can people see Rebels & Icons and visit MOPOP?
You can go to mopop.org and see everything we have to offer. The Jeanette Beckman exhibit is opening on May 15th. It will be here for 6 months, and when it’s done, we’re going to travel it all over the world, so you may see it at another museum.
We also have our online collection that you can look at, with 1,300 items. We have 85,000 artifacts in our care, and we are a nonprofit. Putting 1,300 artifacts online took us a year, so we have a little ways to go in terms of that. We’re right here in downtown Seattle, right next to the Space Needle, so if you are in town, please stop by.
