of
music’s museum
M
arcie Booth (A/S ’06) never knows whom she’ll meet at work. Maybe a Beatle, Quincy Jones, Seal, Mavis Staples…
She is the operations and project manager at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. “Not too many people have jobs where they have those oh-my-gosh moments, being introduced to Ringo Starr or Dave Matthews,” Booth says. “I get those moments pretty often, which is lucky for me.”
She recalls her first such moment: “The week the museum opened, I gave a tour to Diane Warren. She walked up to me and said, ‘Do you work here? I’m in the museum; my name is Diane Warren.’ My jaw just dropped: Oh my god, you’ve written every love song that I’ve liked since I was fourteen. So it was cool walking her through the museum and talking about the exhibits.”
Songwriters Hall of Fame Gallery and an exhibit, “Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey.” And she oversaw the 2010 opening of the Ray Charles Memorial Library, located a couple miles from the museum. “It’s actually Ray Charles’ old offices. Everything is the same since he died in 2004,” Booth says. “That was a fun project for me because I learned so much. I was working with people who knew Mr. Charles.” The Grammy Museum (grammymuseum.org/) is all about education. “We do all kinds of things with children, from backstage passes where they meet the Jonas Brothers to learning about music genres they might never have heard of. It’s so cool to see kids [of] four or five come
Booth has been at the museum since its 2008 opening. The four-floor facility celebrates the legacy of recorded music. After graduating from UT, the Brookfield, Ohio, native headed west to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. Booth reached out to the L.A. Chi Omega alumni group and landed a part-time job with AEG Sales and Marketing as an account executive selling tickets for the Los Angeles Kings hockey team. After graduating in 2008, she saw an AEG listing for a coordinator at the museum. “The museum wasn’t even open. The first time I went there, it was a construction site — I wore a hard hat,” she says. Since being there at the ground level, she’s helped shape the institution. Booth has worked on the
‘The week the museum opened, I gave a tour to Diane Warren.’
Booth with Quincy Jones
on a Saturday and dance around to music by Daniel Ho or Ziggy Marley, or have high school kids learn there’s more to the music business than being a Drake or Nicki Minaj or a Justin Timberlake or Christina Aguilera — there’s the managers, the producers, the engineers, the songwriters — all these people that make the music happen.” Booth recently learned she’s included in Who’s Who in Black Los Angeles. “That was a shock to me because I started as a little part-timer who worked for the [Los Angeles] Kings. It was a cool moment to say, wow, I’ve really come this far and to see other people are recognizing my hard work and dedication to the museum.”
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— Vicki L. Kroll Toledo Alumni Magazine | Spring 2011
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