In 2023, Grammy winning artist Janis Ian announced that she would donate her life's work to Berea College to be preserved and displayed in its library archives.

Next weekend, this monumental collection will finally be on display.

From activism to songwriting to being the first musical guest ever on Saturday Night Live, Ian's career is worth studying, and now anyone can have access to it.

Students at the public alike.

My wife and I were running a foundation at the time called the Pearl Foundation after my mother, who went back to college in her forties and graduated with a master's.

My wife, who had been a teacher and ran a school many years before, had a student who had gone to Berea, and the student kept talking about how amazing Berea was.

And we came up and spent a weekend and saw things like the fishery and the arts, of course, and were talking to a lot of the students and we decided to make Berea one of the colleges that we sponsored.

When you're a donor, they bother you every year to make sure that they're not forgotten.

And Pat made a deal with them.

My wife, she said, If you don't bother us, we'll keep giving you money.

Well, Tracy didn't listen and she kept showing up.

And so we got to like her and we were friends.

And he was talking about archives and I was talking about my archives and how I had talked to the New York Public Library or I talked with Rutgers and had talked with the Smithsonian in that no, no place really made me happy.

And at one point I just looked at her and I said, Why don't I just leave them to Berea?

The only condition I've laid down to the archivist and the school contractually is that they be open to the public, that they not be reserved for academicians.

I just want other people, particularly young artists, to be able to benefit The exhibit that they are putting together for this opening event concentrates much more on my what I call bling things like Grammys and awards and gold records, platinum records, things like that, guitars, things fans have made over the years.

My companies are called Rude Girl after a reporter who told my manager that I was a very rude girl and nowhere near as nice as Shirley Temple.

So I need my company through girl publishing Rude Girl Records.

So my fans started making little Reed Girl Dolls that we would prop up at concerts.

Having everything housed in one place gives people who are interested in the history of the arts in America or the history of women in the arts in America.

A 60 year glimpse of contracts, financial papers, all of that stuff.

If a young artist comes here thinking, Well, the music industry is so different today, you're right, it is different, but it's the same.

The Portuguese say the flies are different, but the crap is the same.

The fight to maintain your own integrity as an artist will not change because people will continue making money off your art.

And when there is money involved, there are grifters involved.

And part of this hopefully will teach people how to protect themselves.

What I have learned is that the work is what endures and the work is what is important.

Not me, not the awards, but the work.

When you have a song like Jessie being used by the armed forces to comfort the families of missing and Action soldiers and other military, when you have a song like at 17, that has changed so many lives, when you have a song like Stars, that brings comfort in a different way to performers, you have created a legacy.

And that legacy is what will endure long after I'm gone.

Indeed, the exhibit is still a work in progress, but it will be ready for the four day opening celebration starting the 17th.

The event is named Breaking Silence after Ian's 1993 album.