Minneapolis is marking the 10th anniversary of Prince’s death with a multi-day “10th Anniversary Celebration of Life” at Paisley Park, the Chanhassen, Minnesota home and studio that is now a sprawling museum dedicated to him. The event is being packaged as a larger production than the annual Prince celebrations in the area, with the itinerary set to begin on June 3 and culminate on June 7, which would have been Prince’s 68th birthday.
Who Gets to Script the Memory
The celebration is being organized around a public narrative shaped by Prince’s longtime attorney and business partner, L. Londell McMillan, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who announced a community sing-along the day before the broader event was revealed. The two-hour interactive event will be a free, all-ages outdoor event near the downtown Prince mural in Minneapolis. Even in death, the machinery of official remembrance is busy arranging the terms: where people gather, how long they stay, and which version of Prince gets presented back to the public.
Frey said in a statement, “In Minneapolis, we don’t just remember Prince—we feel him in the streets, in the music, in who we are.” McMillan said attendees of the multi-day celebration will witness “a cross section of his artistic and brilliance and his human spirit across his lifespan.” He also said, “Hopefully we can move from a place of just being sad that he’s not here to wishing he was here, but feeling grateful that he was here during our time, and we got a chance to witness his talents and his magic.”
What People Are Being Offered
The public-facing piece announced so far is a free, all-ages outdoor sing-along near the downtown Prince mural. That is the sort of community event that can look like mutual aid in a city, even as it remains tightly framed by official announcements and the institutions that control the commemorative stage. The celebration is also described as larger than the annual Prince celebrations in the area, suggesting a more expansive effort to package his legacy for public consumption.
McMillan told CNN, “I think fans are going to be very surprised this year, because usually Prince’s work and catalogs have been focused on distinct projects and periods.” He added, “For the 10th year, what they’re going to get is a true celebration of his life.” The language of surprise and curation makes clear that access to Prince’s legacy is being managed as an event, not simply remembered as a shared cultural inheritance.
The Life Behind the Museum
Prince was found dead at his Paisley Park home in Chanhassen, Minnesota, on April 21, 2016, after an accidental fentanyl overdose. He was 57. The home and studio where he died is now a sprawling museum dedicated to him, turning a private space into a public site of pilgrimage and controlled memory.
Prince was an intensely private artist who could play dozens of instruments and revolutionized stage performance. He won 7 Grammy Awards during his lifetime and wrote dozens of hit songs for others, including Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” The Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” and “I Feel for You” as sung by Chaka Khan. Those facts sit beneath the official celebration, but the event itself is being shaped by people with institutional access and public authority, not by the ordinary fans whose attachment keeps the legacy alive.
The anniversary schedule begins on June 3 and culminates on June 7, which would have been Prince’s 68th birthday. In Minneapolis, the memory of Prince is being routed through a museum, a mayor’s statement, and a business partner’s promises of a “true celebration,” all of it carefully organized from above while the public is invited to participate on terms already set.