Last August, when Angie Marchese became director of archives at Paisley Park, the rock star Prince’s studio and residence, one of the first things she did was to get rid of all the candles. Festooning nearly every room of the compound, they came in all sizes, shapes, colors and scents (including a few of Prince’s own aromatic blends).

“We replaced all the real candles with artificial candles,” Ms. Marchese said in an interview this week in an anteroom at the compound, as her team prepared for a series of events marking the one-year anniversary of Prince’s death on Friday. (Her crew cataloged and archived the originals.) “We still wanted the essence of the candles, and how they made the rooms feel, without the fire hazard,” she explained. “Prince can burn Paisley Park down, but I can’t.”

Ms. Marchese and her team — the same group that oversees Elvis Presley’s Memphis mansion-turned-tourist-stop Graceland — have been tasked with maintaining the grounds of Paisley Park, which Prince built in this remote suburb of Minneapolis in 1987. Once a commercial recording studio, with a soundstage also available for hire, Paisley Park became Prince’s residence during his final years, and throughout its history he hosted hundreds of private concerts and dance parties for fans.

In October, the complex opened as a museum that showcases instruments, clothes, awards and other ephemera. But, like Prince himself, the process of telling his history was mysterious. How did the team go about discovering, cataloging, selecting and displaying Prince’s life via his massive collection of objects?