The Mall of America

Prompted by an article I read in the New York Times Magazine, March 4, 2007.

This summer, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota (within easy reach of the
Minneapolis/St. Paul airport - an easy shopping day trip?) will celebrate its 15th Anniversary. While it remains the largest mall in the United States at 4.2 million square feet, there are several more in Asia that are larger. The current leader is a mall in China that is 9.6 million square feet.

If you click on the link above, you will learn a bunch of useless facts about the Mall of America's "hugeness" including the banal statistic that "258 Statues of Liberty could lie inside." More than 500 stores and 20,000 parking spaces await you and you can even order a coupon book online.

The article goes on to attempt to explain how the "Mall of America" has become a brand (MY friend went to the Mall of America and all they could afford was this lousy T-shirt). One woman is attempting to poke some fun at that. Rosemary Williams, who is an artist and an assistant professor at St. Cloud State University, decided to make a "sculpture," she called the Wall of Mall. Her blog, Rosemarygoestothemall.com, explains her plan. There are even podcast episodes available for download. Here she chronicles her problem, in that stores did not want to give her a bag without a purchase. So she has been spending weeks going back and forth, buying things and returning them to get the bag for her sculpture, which you can see here.

The things some people will do for their art. And here in DC, even the garbage is being turned into art.