Minnesota in wintertime: Art Shanty Projects
by Daniel Graham ’26
Every year, as temperatures drop from cold to frigid to Ice-Age-inducing, Minnesotans get creative. When the land of 10,000 lakes turns into the land of 10,000 ice skating rinks, winter fanatics go out to the middle of one of them and set up shop.
Since 2004, the Art Shanty Projects have taken over a frozen lake for a few weeks almost every winter to host a small village of multimedia artists who display their quirky creations in little shacks anchored to the ice.
Though they journeyed to different lakes in their early years, the shanties have settled on Bdé Umáŋ (Lake Harriet) in South Minneapolis, where they stay from mid-January to mid-February, while the ice is thick enough to support their burg. This year, the festival occurred from January 18th to February 9th and opened each weekend for visitors to delight in their arctic art.
No two projects on the lake are the same. They each offer their own brand of the political, thoughtful or plain-old bizarre for guests to enjoy — especially that latter category.
To get to the shanties, guests walk down ramps onto the lake and traverse about 50 feet onto the ice until they reach a roped-off area where the ice is thick enough to support the little community. The shanties are scattered over about 500 feet, as if they appeared on the lake by coincidence.
Some shanties link directly to current politics, like the Banned Book Reading Room, where guests can see a library of banned books and the excuses that different places have used to ban them. There’s also the Policy Party, a colorful van where the Met Council Art + Policy Team hosts games of “Go Policy,” a version of Go Fish where players match policy cards to learn about the Met Council’s transit goals.
Other shanties allow guests to get directly involved in their creation. The Close-Knit Pavilion invites visitors to knit on looms to create the shanty’s roof. A Poem for an Entangled Living features three different beams that have a different word at each end. The shanty supplies a variety of words and images on wooden boards that guests attach with hooks to the beam they desire to help them build their poem.
Some shanties get musical. Reduce Reuse Re-Xylophone invites visitors to use mallets to make noise with its wooden and metal structure. Hot Box: Disco Inferno II welcomes guests into a shanty painted to look like a flaming dumpster with a DJ booth and dancefloor inside where they can party for the duration of a couple songs. Pollinator Frenzy dresses its visitors up in butterfly costumes to dance on the ice in a circle around a flat painted wooden flower about ten feet in diameter.
Then, there are shanties that are just odd. Dr. GOONS Miracle Elixirs invites a few visitors at a time to enter to “find the cure to what ails them.” These cures take many different forms, including a viewfinder with different animals, headphones without sound, and a fun hat attached to a cable. A nameless shanty centering around witchcraft gives guests the opportunity to meddle with the dark arts. They can scrutinize supernatural specimens, wave wands, and insinuate incantations.
No two shanties are the same, and they all offer their own brand of amusement and oddity. The Art Shanty Projects are one of those only-in-Minnesota activities that make the Twin Cities so wonderful. These are only some of what the shanties have to offer. They’re out on the ice each year with something new and different, so next year, when temperatures take a plunge, venture out into the middle of a frozen lake for an unforgettable experience.