Built in 1987 by the Black musician Prince Rogers Nelson in the heart of exurban Minnesota, Paisley Park—currently a museum—might be thought of as a very large (6000 sq. m), nondescript object of material culture that is not old enough or beautiful enough to warrant study. This research suggests otherwise: by considering Paisley Park as a significant, Black-owned location for artistic production and community assembly, the place is reassessed as a venue that, in the words of George Lipsitz (2011) in How Racism Takes Place, “turns segregation into congregation.”

While six of Prince’s great grandparents were born into slavery in Louisiana, his father joined the Great Migration and moved to Minneapolis, where Prince was born in 1958. As one of the 20th century’s top recording artists, Prince’s decision to build Paisley Park in an area that was surrounded by lakes and—at the time—cornfields (rather than in the music industry’s hub of California), can be understood as an act of affiliation with his home region and also of Black geographic place-making that asserted a distinctive creative and business presence in a rural, ethnically Northern European context.

Paisley Park features recording studios, a nightclub for dance parties, and a 1160 sq. m sound stage where Prince rehearsed for concerts and frequently performed for locals. The building also contains the living quarters that became Prince’s home, and the location of his death in 2016. Variously and simultaneously a site of aesthetic labour, social gathering, and private domesticity, Paisley Park also housed “The Vault,” in which were stored thousands of hours of artistic production: from informal improvisations to completed albums and films.

By exploring its architecture, intentions, and diverse uses, Paisley Park can be read as an instantiation of multiple issues related to Black identities in the largely White Midwest: a place where geography, space, and materiality meet the politics of race, assembly, and artistic expression in America.