Bio

Jacob McMurray joined MoPOP in 1994 during the initial development of the institution and has held several positions, including Curatorial Assistant, Researcher, Associate Curator, Curator, Senior Curator, and since November 2018, his current role of Director of Curatorial Affairs. During that time he has organized over twenty exhibitions covering many facets of popular culture. McMurray is also the author of Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind (Fantagraphics, 2011), which documents the explosion of Grunge, the Seattle Sound, within the context of the underground punk subculture that was developing throughout the US in the late 1970s and ‘80s.
Outside of MoPOP, McMurray is an avid collector and consumer of genre books, vinyl records, posters, guitars, video games, and extremely heavy, ancient letterpress equipment. He also dabbles in graphic design, focusing on books and print ephemera. At points in the increasingly distant past he was an archaeologist, owned a screen printing studio, and founded a small independent publishing house.
McMurray lives in Seattle with his wife, two daughters, six chickens, and 50,000 honeybees.