As the world still reels following the devastating and untimely death of Prince last week, a slew of beautiful memorials to the late legend have cropped up everywhere from New York to New Orleans. One of the most spectacular was on the fence surrounding Prince’s $6.6M Paisley Park estate, where an intimate memorial service was held for the artist over the weekend. Prince’s longtime collaborator Sheila E. has now revealed plans to open the gates of the Minnesota complex to The Purple One’s millions of fans all around the globe, by turning Paisley Park into a full-blown Prince museum dedicated to his prolific and wildly eclectic career.
“We’re hoping to make Paisley what [Prince wanted] it to be. [He] was working on it being a museum,” Sheila E. said to ET on Sunday. “He’s been gathering memorabilia and stuff from all the tours, like my drums and his motorcycle. There’s a hallway of his awards and things, which he really didn’t care about too much, but he displayed it for the fans because he knows that they would want to see it. There’s pictures of him all down the halls, some you’ve seen before and some never [seen]… There’s a mural on the wall with his hands out and on one side is all the people he was influenced by and the other side is all of us who have played with him… It’s beautiful.”
Prince’s reputation as a private artist was much-discussed in the age of celebrities on Snapchat, as he made no secret about wanting to have the light shone solely on his art. Prince’s brother-in-law Maurice Phillips voiced this to The Sun when discussing plans for the museum. “He was all about the fans — this would remember his music, which is his legacy,” he said. “Prince was always private but would have wanted his music remembered.”
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Text Hannah Ongley
Image via Flickr Creative Commons