Paisley Park as a museum would face a long road ahead
Prince’s Paisley Park already has the look of a museum — sleek white exteriors, few windows, sprawling space — but can it become one in the wake of the influential musician’s death there?
Fans say they want it. Friends say it should happen. A brotherin-law says it will happen. Even the local mayor is making positive noises about Chanhassen, Minn., becoming home to its first museum.
But it’s anything but a slamdunk. GRACELAND ... OR NEVERLAND? What would it take to turn Paisley Park into a Midwestern version of Elvis Presley’s Graceland, a for-profit house museum in Memphis that charges $35 to $80 for adult admission and gets more than a half-million visitors a year?
A will from Prince stating his wishes would have allowed him to assign his millions to create a tax-deductible, non-profit museum to his musical legacy.
“The biggest obstacle is the fact that Prince died without a will,” says accountant Bob Charron, a CPA and partner at Friedman LLP, a New York-based tax and accounting firm. “When people declare in a will that they are leaving a substantial asset to charity, it saves (their heirs) up to 50% in estate taxes.”
With clear instructions, none of Prince’s heirs ( believed to be one sister and five half-siblings) could have blocked his plans by, say, insisting on the sale of Paisley Park so they could claim their piece of it.
But no will has turned up, so Prince’s estate is going to go through probate. A judge and executor will be responsible for determining his assets and their value and distributing those assets equitably, after subtracting legal fees, debts and taxes.
“Even if they create a nonprofit charity (such as a museum), it won’t help the heirs in this tax bill they’re facing,” says Jeffrey Eisen, a trusts and estates lawyer at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP in Los Angeles. “You only get deductions if you have a will or a trust.” WHAT DO FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FANS SAY ABOUT A MUSEUM? “We will turn Paisley Park into a museum in Prince’s memory. ... He was all about the fans,” declared Maurice Phillips, who is married to Prince’s sister Tyka Nelson, after the star’s death on April 21.
“We’re hoping to make Paisley what (Prince wanted) it to be. (He) was working on it being a museum,” his former lover and band drummer, Sheila E., told En
tertainment Tonight. “He’s been gathering memorabilia. ... 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.”
Denny Laufenburger, mayor of Chanhassen, says the city would welcome Paisley Park becoming a permanent attraction, but it will be months before he expects to discuss that with Prince’s heirs.
“What’s important to me is that we listen to the family’s wishes, because they will be reflecting what Prince wanted, and we do what we can as a city to accommodate the safety of our citizens, the safety of our visitors,” Laufenburger told reporters. CHANHASSEN IS NO MEMPHIS The city of 25,000 in the Minneapolis suburbs is a bedroom community, not a tourist mecca of any sort. Memphis is a city of nearly 700,000, and Graceland alone draws almost that many visitors every year.
The zoning around Paisley Park would permit a museum, says city manager Todd Gerhardt, but Prince’s heirs would have to present a development proposal that would gets lots of scrutiny.
“We have to look at logistics, traffic, parking, noise, hours of operations,” he says. “The last thing anyone wants is interruptions in day-to-day life.”
The consent of the community is crucial for such a project. Objections helped stall discussion of turning Michael Jackson’s Neverland estate into a shrine after his death in 2009.
The locals in California’s Santa Ynez Valley called it NEVERland, as in: It’s never going to happen. And it didn’t. COULD DISAGREEMENTS AMONG HEIRS HAMPER A MUSEUM? In the absence of a will, creating a museum would require all the heirs to agree, Eisen says. “Any one of them could cause all kinds of problems,” he says.
Robert Strauss, an estate-planning lawyer at Weinstock Manion in Los Angeles, says the heirs not only have to cooperate on developing a museum, they have to decide where the money will come from to operate it
“Do they contribute to it from their own assets or raise money from the public?” he says. “Everyone has a different vision of what to do, and everybody wants to be in control.” MAKING MUSEUMS IS HARD Opening a museum is a complicated process; you don’t just throw up a ticket stand and open the doors.
Cissy Foote Anklam is a museum development consultant in Mississippi who helped develop the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Miss., and the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, N.C.
She says modern museums need to establish foundations, appoint boards, figure out a decision-making structure, set up a master plan and, most of all, raise money.
Museums today also need to present a coherent narrative, she says.
“It may start as a shrine, but now museums are going the way of cultural- and heritage-tourism,” she says. “It’s not just about Prince. It’s about, what else can Prince and his house tell you about the world in his time and his impact on it?”