Let There Be (LED) Light! Target Brightens Up Minneapolis Skyline with Fireflies

There’s nothing quite like a silhouetted skyline, whether you’re in New York, San Francisco or St. Louis. We may be a little biased, but we’ll always have a special place in our hearts for the Minneapolis skyline.

The skyline has shined a little brighter since 2011, when 700,000 LED lights were added across the south tower of Target’s downtown headquarters. The “Target Lights” form crystal clear images—from a giant “fish tank” to abstract designs—that turn into motion art shows scrolling around a 360-degree screen from dusk to dawn.

The Target Lights hold the title for largest LED display in the Midwest, but the brand has reserved the lights to be a public art gift, not an advertisement. Work by designers and artists such as Robert Seidel, Dev Harlan, Candas Sisman and more has had its time in the spotlight, delighting downtown residents and visitors with a unique light show.

This month, Target is teaming up with Walker Art Center’s Minneapolis Sculpture Garden to turn the Target Lights into an interactive art installation inspired by sweet, childhood summers. Their muse? Fireflies—the season’s brightest bug.

Visitors to the sculpture garden can interact with color-coded jars that correspond to the Target Lights. Inside each jar is a “firefly” made of jewelry-like metal work, raw electrical components and glowing light bulb filaments. As visitors move closer to each jar, fireflies begin to pulsate, coming to life in the jar in front of you and signaling the Target lights to begin buzzing on the screen above you.

As visitors interact with jars across the garden, fireflies start mixing on the LED screen, making beautiful abstract patterns of lights and lines. You’ll feel as though you’re seeing a dense group of fireflies floating through the night sky, more than 34 stories above the garden.

The free art installation occurs for three Thursday nights in July (11, 18, 25) from 9-11:30 p.m. CT, so if you find yourself in the Twin Cities, check out Minneapolis Sculpture Garden or at least look up to see the lights!