Olivia Rodrigo Grammy Museum Exhibit Reveals the Handmade Heart of ‘the cure’

The Olivia Rodrigo Grammy Museum exhibit opening this September offers something that most pop promotional campaigns do not: a genuine argument for craft. ‘Olivia Rodrigo: the cure unraveled,’ presented by American Express, opens 2 September at the Grammy Museum and runs through 22 February 2027, placing the handmade world of her ‘the cure’ video inside glass cases and interactive installations for the public to examine up close.

The timing, as Billboard notes, is worth clocking: the exhibition opens roughly six weeks before first-round voting begins for the 69th annual Grammy Awards on 12 October, and its run extends until 15 days after the awards are presented at Crypto.com Arena. For an artist who has received three Grammy wins from 14 nominations, including best new artist in 2022, the museum placement feels less like coincidence and more like a considered cultural statement.

Cardboard, Felt and Stop-Motion: What the Exhibition Actually Contains

The video for ‘the cure,’ directed by Cat Solen and Jaime Gerin, places Rodrigo inside a handmade hospital where she experiments on felted human hearts. Miniatures, animatronic heart puppets and stop-motion animation build the surreal environment, but what the camera rarely dwells on is the sheer material density of the production. According to Billboard, production designer Liam Moore transformed nearly every surface and object using cardboard and hand-painted details, a process that rewards the kind of close scrutiny a museum visit allows.

Among the pieces on display are Rodrigo’s nurse costume, a miniature operating room and a beating felt heart, alongside handwritten and hand-stitched artwork used in the album packaging for you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. Original storyboards and behind-the-scenes photography are also part of the exhibition. It is the kind of analogue accumulation that sits oddly alongside contemporary pop’s digital-first instincts, which is precisely what makes it worth seeing in person.

A special launch event on 1 September will feature Rodrigo in conversation with filmmaker and author Cameron Crowe, plus a live performance and early access to the exhibition. An expanded version, featuring additional previously unseen artefacts from across Rodrigo’s career, is planned for early autumn, with further details to be announced.

‘I grew up going to the Grammy Museum and their mission is especially important to me, so it’s a full circle moment to be able to work with them on this exhibit,’ Rodrigo says. ‘It’s the perfect place to feature “the cure” music video pieces that mean so much to me, as well as some incredibly special items from the past decade that we’re later adding that I’ve never shown before.’

Olivia Rodrigo Grammy Museum Exhibit Meets Fast Food: The Taco Bell Dimension

Running in parallel, and in a rather different register, is a collaboration with Taco Bell. The Olivia Rodrigo Grammy Museum exhibit may be the more considered artefact, but the Taco Bell tie-in is the more immediately visible one. ‘You Seem Pretty Pink for a Baja Blast’ is a pink lemonade-inflected version of Mountain Dew Baja Blast, inspired by the new album. Rodrigo, who has described Baja Blast as ‘one of my favorite drinks ever,’ will take the first sip alongside fans on 29 August, when the drink debuts at Live Más Cafés ahead of a nationwide rollout at Taco Bell on 24 September for a limited run. A Baja Blast Freeze version will remain exclusive to Live Más Cafés.

The drink’s debut is tied to the inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival on 29 August in Irvine, California, which will include an immersive activation with photo opportunities and limited edition merchandise. Taco Bell Rewards members will have a further opportunity via a Pretty Pink Picnic Kit, arriving as a Tuesday Drop on 29 September.

The two partnerships occupy different corners of the pop-star experience economy. The Taco Bell collaboration is designed for reach and immediacy; the Grammy Museum exhibition is designed to endure, with the expanded autumn instalment bringing previously unseen material that Rodrigo says she has never publicly shown. That second phase, whenever its full details emerge, is the one to watch.