To: Prince, Dearly Beloved; For: The People

As early as 12 years old, Emma Balázs had Prince Rogers Nelson in her life in Australia; not physically, but through his “dimensions of influence,” contradictory ways of living and daringness to dream. In 2018, Balázs curated an exhibition that welcomed 3,000 visitors and featured artists from six countries. Yet, her calling to understand her heartbrokenness after his death persisted 10 years later with a new purpose: to commemorate. 

Curator, writer and filmmaker Balázs didn’t always live in the Twin Cities and was working in New York at the time of Prince’s death. She eventually moved to Minnesota after numerous internal arguments about whether her heartbrokenness would be met with solace.

“When I came here, I found all these people who were similarly devastated by his death and just talking about how influential he’d been in their lives,” Balázs says. “That sort of led me to thinking about how I could use my skills and experience as a gift to Prince by collecting the stories and the art that people are offering up, as you know, a testament about the power of art and the influence of just one single artist.”

It was in the streets of Minneapolis and beyond where Balázs says she encountered numerous people who held stories, their tributes lining the Paisley Park fence, through tears, smiles and melancholy. 

She knew that collecting these stories now meant obtaining beautiful, raw, emotive, and meaningful testimonies on how Prince influenced them, which is why, soon after she started the collection process for her first exhibition, which featured “Houses of Prince.”

“I did this because I needed to put a structure around it that gives the respect back to the people and tells them that their voice matters,” she says. “It’s not just about some official document of who Prince was and what his music did and how successful he was.”

And, although the pandemic prohibited a 2020 museum in North Minneapolis, as time inched toward the 10th anniversary of Prince’s passing, she felt a strong pull to create her second exhibition with an emphasis on commemoration.

Opening on Prince’s birthday (June 7), the community-sourced museum will be in Roberts Gallery, just a one-minute walk from an important house he lived in during his childhood after being taken in by Bernadette Anderson when his parents separated in 1965.

Conceptualized as a “counter museum,” Balázs wants attendees not to view it as oppositional, but instead complementary and “potentially radical,” questioning who has ownership of history. 

Naming her curation “The People’s Museum,” she welcomes everyone to submit their artwork through personal stories in the form of written narrative or a voice/video recording, or even something inspired by Prince in the form of dance or visual art. 

“Everyone’s welcome to tell their story,” Balázs says. “You don’t have to be a professional artist to share your art. You don’t have to be a writer to share your story.”

Though the unshaped submission process exists now, it started from a different idea based on what Balázs refers to as the “seven dimensions of his influence,” which include music, style, sexuality, spirituality, grief, joy, and music. 

“I thought that might be evocative and help people start to think about submission ideas,” she says. “ I was sort of trying to frame it, but then very quickly I removed it, because I was thinking that it should emerge from what people give me.”

Who reviews the submissions? For the most part, Balázs takes charge, yet after years in the Prince-loving scene, she has a large network of fans and friends who assist her in the process.

Already, Balázs says many submissions align with the theme of grief, since this year’s museum has a commemorative focus. So far, she has been receiving stories about receiving the news of Prince’s passing, reflection in times of intense sadness, and the many ways grief can be dealt with.

“The other thing about Prince is that he was so joyful, and so he was so good at bringing people together to celebrate life, so I feel like that’s on me as a curator, to make sure that I have both present,” Balázs says. “Because the other thing about Prince is he emboldened so many people to feel that they could be their full, true, weird, creative, amazing self.”

Our Dearly Beloved, on a Purple Screen 

Beyond the realm of the museum exists its first film: “Dearly Beloved,” a seven-minute documentary tracing a nine-year pilgrimage through Prince’s Minnesota homes as a meditation on community, grief, and unexpected transformation, with Balázs telling her personal story as a voiceover. 

“Basically, I just filmed everything when I came to Minneapolis after he passed as my way of honoring him, because I didn’t know what I was doing, it became almost like an instinctive, intuitive pilgrimage,” she says. “So before I came to Minneapolis, I thought, ‘Well, what am I going to do there?’ And I just felt this need to follow in his footsteps.”

Balázs says she eventually began researching, tracing each house he lived in, going on an instinctive voyage through the city’s archives at libraries.

“I didn’t have a car, so, you can imagine, in Minneapolis, I was catching buses, and walking places that people don’t walk to around here, and it was really bizarre,” Balázs says. “ I did this sort of pilgrimage, basically filmed it on my iPhone, and then all kinds of incredible things happened. I met so many people here. I ended up falling in love. I moved to Minneapolis, you know, just this whole transformation of my life.”

Balázs has received lots of requests for screenings of “Dearly Beloved,” and is currently working on putting one together. She hopes that viewers will feel the power that art can have on people, and for them to, in turn, value artists more. 

“I’m a filmmaker, first of all by training, and then later I became a curator,” Balázs says. “So I think that they’re often intertwined for me. And we all know the power of the moving image, and, you know, as a storytelling medium, it’s incredible. I love both so much.”