Blizzard warnings in Northwest Minnesota, winter weather advisories across the state

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Marcus Young meditates in the MAEP Gallery of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The area where the wall appears distorted on the left is actually a curtain leading to the video room where Young has slept the past several nights.

When I walked into the lobby of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts earlier this week, a young man was quietly washing the glass doors, dressed in blue jeans and a pale blue work shirt. A woman with a camera stopped to ask him a question, in response to which he just nodded and smiled. She asked again - more nods, and more smiles. Slightly befuddled, she walked away.

, and he is not on staff at the MIA; he's a performance artist, and for the last ten days he's taken the term "artist in residence" quite seriously.

As part of the museum's latest Minnesota Artist exhibition, titled "

," Young decided to put himself on display.

"With nothing to give, I give myself," he explained in an artist statement. "I faced the stark realization that I can make no object worthy of the galleries of the Institute, so I decided to give myself. It will be a temporary loan of my life."

Young engages in "slow walking" each day at the museum, dressed in flowing blue robes.

Young took the stipend offered to him by the MIA and divided it by minimum wage; the result was the number of hours he would spend in the museum - ten full days.

Curator Christopher Atkins says the performance art has challenged museum security. How do you allow Young to spend the night, and not trip the alarm system? Where and when will he bathe? What and where will he eat?

But those issues were resolved, and on November 8 Young took up residence in the MAEP gallery, sleeping in the adjoining video room.

Young divides his day between meditating, washing windows and "slow walking," a meditative practice for which he dons flowing blue robes. While Young is "on display," he says he does not  want to become a spectacle.

One MIA staffer remarked "our doors have never been cleaner."

Young's residency culminates tonight in an artist talk - along with the other artists features in "Semblances" - at 7pm. There he will finally talk again after ten days of silence, and he'll share with the audience some of what learned from the experience.

Young is perhaps best known for his work as the Artist in Residence for the city of Saint Paul, where he created the 

. But he's also organized sing-a-longs at the State Fair, serenaded sleepers at the Walker Art Center for Northern Spark, and convinced people (Minnesotans!) to dance spontaneously in public.

Arts and Culture

State of the Arts Blog

Marianne Combs

Author

Marcus Young takes the term 'artist in residence' quite literally, spending ten days (and nights) in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Artist takes up residence at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Go Deeper.

Like this?