Up In The Sky! It’s A Billboard! It’s A Beer Ad! No! It’s Art!

When Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center closed for a full year in order to renovate and expand, it launched “Walker Without Walls”, a series of events and installations intended to keep the museum’s name on everyone’s lips. The most constantly visible example of the museum’s efforts has been a large billboard on one of the city’s main downtown streets, which has featured a new specially created artwork by a different artist each month. But what is the public actually getting out of the billboard, which offers no explanation of what it is or why it’s there? One passer-by mistook the latest billboard for a beer ad – “Red Stripe, I think. Definitely not Budweiser” – and another thinks she sees “dried-up death on one side.”