Minneapolis is a hotbed of Black Arts creativity: The nation’s third largest theater market was once the epicenter of legendary “Fences” playwright August Wilson. Hit indie films like ‘Dear White People’ are filled with location shots around town and of course the City of Lakes is internationally known as the musical temple of Prince and Paisley Park.

Minneapolis is also a city that pulsates with the power and politics of public art. More than a dozen African American artists – including a Guggenheim Fellow – have helped shaped the city’s identity by contributing to its collection of 300 works of art that stretch from its parks and bridges on its northern edges to the Mississippi River running through the southeast.

Then there’s the “other” public art – the hundreds of murals that have wrapped Minneapolis neighborhoods in a blanket of vibrant color since George Floyd’s death and becoming the eye of the 21st century’s Civil Rights movement. The murals not only give Minneapolis its identity, but a voice in the nation’s call for equity.

While other cities boast of 1,000-piece collections or commissioned work by internationally known artists, Minneapolis has always had the confidence to go its own way, resulting in a lively creative scene that’s often admired and imitated around the world. Take a tour from North to South Minneapolis and hear what the city’s top African American artists, muralists and curators say are the best public works by Minneapolis’ black artists and those that honor the city’s black pioneers and leaders.

Boldly colored and filled with familiar and famous faces that pioneered and put the neighborhood in the national spotlight, the 10’ by 70’ mural on Wally’s neighborhood grocery store is a love song to the near northside, commonly known as North Minneapolis. “Northsiders have incredible pride and the strongest spirit,” says Russell, whose graffiti and stencil work graces some of the city’s most legendary murals. “This was a gift from me to my community.” Stop by to take selfies next to images of Prince (who played basketball for the North High Polars) and you might run into other North Side stars, like ‘Jellybean’ Johnson, prolific drummer for Minneapolis funk superstars The Time.

Find It: Wally’s Foods, Penn Avenue and Golden Valley Road

The world watched for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while George Floyd’s died at the hands of Minneapolis police in front of a southside convenience store. The Central neighborhood became the epicenter of grief, rage and politics. Thousands flocked to spot where Floyd died to pray, protest, leave poems and flowers. “I actually grew up on this corner, 38th and Chicago… this particular corner has a special place in my heart,” says Russell. For him and many others, it was a hub of black life – once a destination for African Americans migrating from the south. A working-class neighborhood, Central was one of the few places blacks could own homes and businesses, flourishing from the 1930’s to the ‘70’s. Social Clubs not only provided lively networking for young black people, its members created food co-ops, credit unions and challenged segregation in downtown hotels. Russell created the haunting black and white image of Floyd not only as a memorial, but as a symbol of black Minneapolis’ history and strength. First installed on the corner where Floyd died, the 12’ x 12’ aerosol and latex portrait has been moved crosstown to Near North, just a five minute drive from Russell’s ‘North Minneapolis’ mural.

Find It: Exterior, Community Land Trust Building Glenwood Avenue and Newton Avenue North, Minneapolis 55405

Inspired by the beauty surrounding the Mississippi River, Harrison’s archway was created to be an entry from an urban landscape to wildflower gardens and plum trees in historic Theodore Wirth Park. But it’s become much more to the predominantly Black community nearby. “It’s supposed to serve as a gateway,” says Jo Jo Bell, Minnesota historian and Executive Director of the African American Interpretive Center of Minnesota. “But because of its location at Wirth Park and Harrison’s fabrication of the piece with the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center in South Minneapolis, the work symbolically marries North and South Minneapolis – two sections of the city with historically Black pasts.”

Find It: Northeast corner, Theodore Wirth Parkway and North 26th Avenue, Minneapolis

A decade-long project of promise, determination and legacy, the Seed Project was born from a fight to save John Bigger’s “Celebration of Life” mural - the massive 160-foot tribute to African American heritage was torn down in 2001 by transportation officials to make room for community housing in nearby Heritage Park, along I-94 and Olson Memorial Highway. Considered one of America’s greatest muralists, Biggers died not long after and Minneapolis artists and activists raced to save what they could. A portion of the actual concrete mural is exhibited at Sumner Library in North Minneapolis. But a cadre of the Twin Cities’ celebrated master and emerging artists worked tirelessly with city officials to design, create and install brightly patterned enamel panels across a bridge that spans the metro area highway – in Biggers’ memory.

Find It: Installed fall 2023, Interstate 94 and Olson Memorial Highway Bridge

You can hear Maya Angelou’s words take shape in Lori Greene’s mosaic tribute to women everywhere: “You may trod me in the dirt/But still like dust I rise.” Greene’s bright 12-foot sculptures in red, blue and yellow tile reject the darkness of sexual assault and remind us that broken pieces like mosaics can be put together to create something new. Each of the five columns show a woman as she rises from a place of isolation with the help of community around her, sharing the messages “You Are Not Alone”, “We Are With You” and We Believe You” etched lengthwise in stone. The circular designs in the seating area represent the ripple effect that happens when survivors share their stories. Greene’s memorial is the first national memorial to sexual assault survivors. The emotional tribute has withstood damaging attacks, with Greene, a survivor herself, doing the repair work each time. An optimist, the public artist says the destruction proves how much healing is needed. “It’s a very scary time, but we’ve been through scary times before. We need to save our Mother Earth, we need to stop being selfish and care for all that live here.”

Find It: Boom Island Park, East of the Play Area, 724 Sibley St. NE

Look up and be mesmerized – glowing shapes in brilliant colors illuminate the ceiling lobby. It looks simple, but abstract art rarely is. “I use collaged abstracted biomorphic shapes, objects and graphics to tell stories of the Black Experience.” The shapes represent the adaptability of the black body,

Find It: Fourth Floor, Elevator Lobby – Ceiling, Public Services Building 505 Fourth Avenue South

When Nicollet Mall lights up after dark, the filigree-patterned steel globes hanging from the light posts become glowing lanterns in kaleidoscope colors, each ball reflecting the works of Minneapolis poets stenciled with as many as 100 interlaced words. Sagirah Shahid and Junauda Petrus are two award-winning Minneapolis poets whose works reflect the black experience, but public art is never without controversy: one of Petrus’ poems – a rebuke of a former president’s crude comments about women’s bodies – was rejected by the City for fabrication on the lanterns. Despite her eloquent protest and support by politicians and literary heavyweights, the ‘P-word’ poem was not accepted. But Petrus’ substitute lantern poem ‘Ngopti’ still evokes the richness and power of womanhood:

Loving on you is prayer/Like honey
Summer/You were arrival/On my porch
I was nearly just in skin
The breeze was soft petaled/We wanted each other
Yes.

Find Them: Nicollet Mall, West Side between Sixth and Eighth Streets

“In the 1980’s, I hung out as much as I could in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden while Gog and Magog was being installed. It’s a powerful piece,” says Seitu Jones. Like a modern prophet, Puryear used pillars of granite to represent the biblical figures as a warning about God’s enemies – their defeat ushering in a new era of spirituality. Puryear never spoke directly about race but let his craft-inspired sculpture push poetic boundaries, creating allegories about slavery, escapism and identity. “The work is flowing from an inner knowing of how things really are,” Says the Guggenheim fellow. “Although idea and form are ultimately paramount in my work, so too are chance, accident and rawness.”

Find It: Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden, Vineland Place, Minneapolis

“Every Saint needs a home,” says Gates, who rescued the concrete statue of St. Lawrence from a Chicago trash heap - the school named for its patron Saint was demolished. When the Walker Art Center asked the Arts Professor if he’d be interested in installing new work in its Sculpture Garden, Gates immediately chose a spot between conceptual artist Sol Le Witt’s concrete “X with Columns” and a local version of Joseph Beuys’ ‘7000 Oaks’ , a single Cottonwood Tree and stone raising public consciousness about the environment. Gates’ reason: Since the three artists focus on work that reveals life within inanimate objects, “Creating a dialogue between these three ‘saints’ might be interesting”. The black cylindrical brick ‘holy space’ It also reflects Gates’ sense of humor: St. Lawrence was known as the patron saint of comics and humorists.

Find It: Walker Art center Sculpture Garden, Vineland Place, Minneapolis

“I imagine Rafala walking beside me… pushing me,” said Amanda Cortes, a Rafala Green fellowship winner. Green was a Minneapolis mixed media artist who back in the early ‘90’s understood the importance of creating space for people left on the fringe – marginalized communities with no one advocating for them. Ahead of her time, Green used art to design what it takes to unite people. Walk thru her 18’ steel and nylon symbolic archway into Peavey Park, where brilliantly colored stone paths and mosaic tiled benches were created to erase the memory of an infamous liquor store and bring together the five cultural group representing the neighborhood: Native American, Asian, African, Latino and European.

Find It: Peavey Field Park, Northeast Side, 751 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis

Her intense gaze takes on both drivers and pedestrians, challenging the idea of who is allowed to be comfortable in public spaces. Her small fist in the air, hand on hip, little round belly sticking out from under her shirt. A nine-year-old’s mural image shifts the balance of power in a city undergoing enormous change since the death of George Floyd and the center of the 21st century civil rights movement. “I think there’s a shakeup in the art world,” Russell told Artful Living magazine. “Street Artis an extreme, creative action that no limits…its source is human interaction. I believe Street Art is a benefit to society.”

Find It: 912 West Lake Street, Minneapolis

“(One of the) works by African American artists that I have held as sources of inspiration for years,” says Jones – a Minneapolis artist whose socio-political works, like Johnson’s, celebrate the history makers of their time on a massive scale. Best known for his mammoth 50-foot sculpture “Peace Form One” honoring UN Diplomat and Nobel Prize winner Ralph Bunche, Johnson was commissioned by the US Park Service to create large scale public art installations in parks across the country, including Minneapolis. The two interlocking steel wings of the sculpture are said to represent flight and freedom. “It was installed in 1970 in Martin Luther King Park and was rededicated a while back to bring attention to its importance to Minneapolis,” says Jones. Johnson’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern art, the Guggenheim, and London’s Tate Modern.

Find It: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Park 4055 Nicollet Avenue South