Open House: If These Walls Could Talk

Pedicord Apartments, the installation in which viewers/voyeurs to walk down the hallway of an apartment building and eavesdrop on the “tenants,” has always been one of the more popular artworks at the Weisman Art Museum. Now the Minnesota History Center takes Ed and Nancy Kienholz’s idea a few steps further. In the Railroad Island neighborhood on St. Paul’s East Side, an entire house has been outfitted with the domestic and cultural ephemera of various people who have lived there since the Victorian era, including German, Italian, African-American, and Hmong families. Photographs, furniture, toys, and personal effects, along with home movies and oral histories recorded by past Railroad Island residents, intertwine American home life and the immigrant experience. 470 Hopkins St., St. Paul; www.mnhs.org