The lover, sighing like a utility box (or, Mewling and puking on Hennepin Avenue)

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • July 3, 2008 • The Hennepin Theatre Trust and Keep Minneapolis Beautiful—note the curious logo suggesting that the most beautiful things about Minneapolis are its office buildings—have just called for artists’ proposals to decorate utility boxes in a manner interpreting Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man” speech from As You Like It.

I’m not kidding. “These functional works of art,” we are promised, “will add to the spirit and allure of the Hennepin Avenue streetscape.” But ay! Where’s the rub? Here it is: “The Utility Art Box Program,” explains the press release, “is designed to help prevent and reduce graffiti in downtown Minneapolis.”

Arts Orbit is a multisource blog about the local arts scene, featuring both original contributions by Daily Planet writers and entries reprinted from partner blogs and online publications.

In my sociology days, we used to call that “co-optation.” Well, if in the City of Lakes there lurk graffiti artists who would be painting the town illegally if not kept busy painting mistresses’ elbows on utility boxes, let them now show their shining morning faces in search of bubble reputations (and $400).

But I should turn my big manly voice of mockery into a childish treble, for I live in the berg of St. Paul—where our idea of adding to the spirit and allure of the streetscape involves littering it with a fiberglass menagerie.