Later, I found consolation and a chance to commune vicariously with Kabakov through his poetic 1997 structure, entitled Look Up and Read the Words… At first glance, the towering mast by the lake appears to be some kind of electrical conductor; upon closer inspection its 22 steel antennae turn a patch of sky into a ruled page from a composition book. Strung between the lines, filigree wire letters etch the air with a passage in German, which translates in part as: “You look up into the open sky, up into the blue above, where the clouds roll by/ It is perhaps the most beautiful thing that you have ever done or seen in your life.” At the risk of overstating the effect, Kabakov persuades you to participate in his work by attuning you to the natural surroundings.

“That’s the purpose of the project: making people look at what’s around them,” observed Kimberly Davis, director of the L.A. Louver gallery in Venice, California, after our preliminary tour of the works that dot Muenster's downtown. She appreciated Pae White’s marzipan likenesses of the “taco trucks” that are a common sight in the city where both artist and dealer live. White’s roadside inspiration has also inspired the confectioners at Muenster's Café Kleinman; their sugary tacos are displayed in the sweetshop’s window on the popular thoroughfare Prinzipalmarkt.

Locals may relate better to the tidbits spun steps away by Marko Lehanka’s Blume fur Muenster (Flower for Muenster), with its petals formed by severed surfboards and a calyx formed by a monitor and speaker system that broadcasts computer-generated tales. These same locals, however, may be disturbed to find that their neighbors—whose names and addresses have been fed into the computer—or even themselves, meet their demise at the end of each nonsensical episode. With dark humor and a wink at our age-old curiosity about the intimate details of other’s lives, Lehanka uses new technology to resuscitate the ancient art of storytelling and the oral dissemination of news (and gossip) by the proverbial town crier.

“This project really has a human scale to it,” said Davis. “A sense of the hand that’s making all this is one of the things that connects people to art and really makes it meaningful.”

In the park, beneath the bridge, in the rain, Philipsz mournfully sang both lovers’ parts from Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffman, based on the German writer E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Story of the Lost Reflection, which lends the sound piece its evocative title. As Philipsz’s entrancing voice bounced back and forth across Lake Aa, I felt as though I heard distant echoes of the mysterious muse known as the Lady of the Lake, a figure from Arthurian legend memorably conjured by Pre-Raphaelite poets and painters.

A storybook scene is also evoked by Guillaume Bijl in his improbable Archaeological Site, part of a series he calls “Sorry” works of “absurd poetry.” In a city in which church steeples remain enduring attractions, Bijl has implanted a shingled spire in a ditch dug deep into a hilltop.

Peering over the edge of the fenced pit at the intact facade, with a red glow emanating from the archways on all four sides, I wanted to believe for a moment that I was gazing at a remnant from the Brothers Grimm, who like fantasist town criers once collected and spread fairy tales in these parts. But I knew all too well that eyes, and artists, play tricks on us, and things are not always as they seem.