“Selena: From Texas To The World” at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles

The Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles isn’t just another music museum, it’s a hands-on celebration of music history, creativity, and culture. It covers a huge range of genres (rock, hip-hop, jazz, classical, Latin, country, R&B) and focuses on the story behind the music, not just the end result. And despite having lived in LA for several years, I had never been!

The space features multi-floor exhibits exploring artists, genres, and recording history. There are some pretty cool interactive experiences where you can learn about songwriting, production, and the recording process by actually recording in mock sound booths. There’re even rotating special exhibits that spotlight major music movements or icons like Selena.

Right now from January 15 to March 16, 2026, the museum is hosting a special pop-up exhibition dedicated to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, one of the most influential Latin artists in music history. This is kind of a once in a lifetime display for fans because many of her personal items are being shown outside of Texas for the first time ever. It’s also what finally brought me to the museum.

The exhibit itself was much more intimate than I had anticipated with only a handful of her outfits on display, hand-drawn fashion designs from her teenage years, some of her awards and my personal favorite, her personal mic still stained with her iconic lipstick. There were video clips of some of her interviews and performances playing on one wall and a space for fans to leave hand written notes for her on the other. It was a sad but lovely exhibit.

If you’re a music lover, like me, and have never been to the museum it’s definitely worth the $22.50 admission. However, if you’re only going for the Selena exhibit you might be a bit disappointed. It took about an hour and a half to get into the exhibit area and then only 10-15 minutes to thoroughly look at everything. Just something to keep in mind.

Because of the mix of education, pop-culture celebration, and music trivia, it’s a cool spot for music lovers, especially if you enjoy seeing how the music you love came to be. There’s lots to explore, so even if you’re not familiar with every genre the museum covers, the exhibits are engaging and wide spread enough to make it worth a visit.