Minneapolis Summer 2020
George Floyd 10/14/73 - 5/25/20
"These boards weren’t necessarily meant to be painted on. It was the pain and the trauma that our community has faced so many times again that led to this outcry of visual expression"
-Kenda Zellner-Smith
Meet the Founder
Pictured: Orange background, with a purple edit of the same photo layered on top of kenda sitting on a stool inside a board storage facility.
Pictured: Kenda and Emma setting up a blue, teal ad pink board outside of the Loon Grocery and Deli shop. Another board is leaned against the wall that reads Justice 4 George Floyd in red and green spray paint, signed with a red sprayed painted heart. Vertical board
Art on the train passing by NKB Storage Space
Pictured: Orange background, with a purple edit of the same photo layered on top of kenda sitting on a stool inside a board storage facility.
Life-long South-Sider and founder of Save the Boards Minneapolis, Kenda Zellner-Smith has contributed to the preservation work of over 800 plywood boards and murals created after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. With no background in art preservation, Zellner-Smith realized early on in her preservation efforts, that the boards alone would not generate the accountability and reform Minneapolis community members and other cities alike, had been so desperately pleading for.
With this understanding, she recognized that the boards could be used as tools of learning, reflection, and healing by keeping them physically accessible within the community with which they were created in and for.
Driven by the panic she felt as she watched these pieces of art created by Twin Cities artists and community members alike disappear as quickly as they came, Zellner-Smith began Save the Boards by enlisting the help of friends and volunteers to call local businesses, pass out flyers, and roam the streets of Minneapolis in search of boards before they were otherwise discarded.