Anne Labovitz Wants More Color in Our Lives

A St. Paul artist whose work is a familiar backdrop to travelers through the MSP Airport uses color as a way to promote “radical kindness.”

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“It’s about propagating gratitude and love in a time where it’s an act of resistance,” artist Anne Labovitz says about the brilliant stripes of indigo, ocher, and vermilion across her 180-foot canvas at Terminal 2 at the MSP Airport. She wants you to know: Color is subversive. Even radical.

Labovitz developed her artistic manifesto in 2012 while her exhibition 122 Conversations: Person to Person, Art Beyond Borders was in galleries worldwide, from Sweden to Japan. After six years of work on the project, she began to see that large swaths of color can turn a space into a powerful platform for people to engage with one another in new, creative ways—to embrace all the color in our lives.

In 2018, Labovitz created the I Love You Institute, a worldwide collaborative of diversity experts, therapists, curators, and nonprofit organizations that support Labovitz’s quest to create a movement by using color to make political acts of radical kindness. “There is a level of urgency,” Labovitz says about the world in 2021 and the need for more color in our lives. “This is essential. It is radical. And I’m ready to do the work needed to be done.”

The St. Paul artist has also posted her declaration on color theory in 10-by-10-foot Venetian glass tile murals on the lower level of Terminal 1 at the MSP Airport. “My entire practice has been about creating these moments. Now I have agency to be helpful,” she says. “It’s very fulfilling. Very heartening.” labovitz.com