Minnesota’s Twin Cities are a lively center for music, theater and art in the Midwest. The major museums are the Walker Art Center, a world mecca for contemporary visual, performing and media arts, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, housing a comprehensive collection of eighty thousand works from cultures throughout the world. Both museums offer public and custom tours of their exhibits.
Several smaller museums in the Twin Cities are dedicated to ethnic art. The American Swedish Institute, The Museum of Russian Art, and the American Museum of Asmat Art exhibit art and artifacts that impart a sense of history and cultural understanding, and support each museum’s educational goals.
While these extraordinary museums bring the art of the world to the Twin Cities, hundreds of galleries, artists’ studios and art crawls speak to the richness of the local urban art scene.
In the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District, old “Nordeast” industrial buildings have been converted to studios where artists work and host regular open studio nights for visitors. South Minneapolis has its Ivy Arts Building for local artists to work and show, and St. Paul’s Lowertown boasts five artists’ buildings that open their doors to visitors on the first Friday of every month. On St. Paul’s East Side, the Everest Arts and Science project is turning an old brewery site into a space for artists and art lovers. Artists share this space with medical providers, an acknowledgment of the unique connection between art and science, creativity and health.
Art is personal and interactive in the Twin Cities: visit a studio and enjoy a conversation with the artist, and come away feeling a connection to this vibrant arts community. (Janet Contursi)
