Elsewhere

Living art museum and residency built from the 58-year contents of a downtown thrift store

A genuinely odd and wonderful place. Elsewhere is housed in a former thrift store on South Elm Street stuffed to the rafters with the lifelong hoard of its founder's grandmother — fabrics, toys, books, dolls, beads, jars of buttons. Visiting artists are given residencies in the building on the strict rule that nothing leaves and nothing is added; they can only reuse what is there. The result is a constantly-changing installation that has been called a "living museum."

Open for tours and events, generally Friday through Sunday. Check the website for current hours — it varies with the residency cycle. Found via Atlas Obscura.

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A story
Sylvia Gray ran a thrift store on South Elm Street for 58 years and never threw anything away. After her death in 1997 her grandson, the artist George Scheer, turned the entire packed building — three floors of beads, toys, dolls, fabric, and stuff — into an art residency where artists are forbidden to add to the collection or remove anything from it, only to rearrange it. The result is unlike any other museum anywhere.

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