The Tennessee Association of Museums (TAM) announces that the 47th annual meeting will be held at the Doubletree Hotel in Murfreesboro from March 21-23. Approximately 160 people representing over 90 museums and museum related organizations will be attending the meeting making it one of the largest meetings of TAM.

Ernest Burgess, Mayor of Rutherford County; Mona Herring, Vice President of the Rutherford County Convention & Visitors Bureau, and Walter Durham, Tennessee State Historian will be honored guests at the business luncheon held at noon on Thursday, March 22.

The keynote speaker will be Dr. James Gardner, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. He holds a B.A. with honors in history from Rhodes College and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in history from Vanderbilt University. His professional activities have included service as President of the National Council on Public History, President of the Society for History in the Federal Government, chair of the Nominating Board of the Organization of American Historians, chair of American Association for State and Local History’s Nominating Committee and its Committee on Standards and Ethics, and on the Board of Editors of The Public Historian. He currently serves on the AASLH Council.

Evening events will be held at the Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, Oaklands Historic House Museum, Stones River National Battlefield, and the Center for the Arts. A special guest speaker at 7:15 p.m. at the Center for the Arts will be Superlatone recording artist and Grand Ole Opry member Marty Stuart. A true renaissance man of country music, Stuart has been an innovator and an invaluable preserver of country history — as a performer of classic material; as a photographer and author of the book Pilgrims: Sinners, Saints & Prophets, and as a dedicated collector of important country memorabilia. He has scored six top-ten hits, one platinum and five gold albums, and four Grammy Awards. Stuart’s energetic enthusiasm will be felt as he talks about his work in and out of the music industry and shares his insights as a photographer, writer, collector and arts executive.