Minneapolis - Arts

Arts

The region is second only to New York City in live theater per capita and is the third-largest theater market in the U.S. after New York City and Chicago, supporting the Illusion, Jungle, Mixed Blood, Penumbra, Mu Performing Arts, Bedlam Theatre, the Brave New Workshop, the Minnesota Dance Theatre, Red Eye, Skewed Visions, Theater Latté Da, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, Lundstrum Center for the Performing Arts, and the Children's Theatre Company. The city is home to Minnesota Fringe Festival, the United States' largest nonjuried performing arts festival. French architect Jean Nouvel designed a new three stage complex for the Guthrie Theater, a prototype alternative to Broadway founded in Minneapolis in 1963. Minneapolis purchased and renovated the Orpheum, State, and Pantages Theatres vaudeville and film houses on Hennepin Avenue now used for concerts and plays. A fourth renovated theater, the former Shubert, joined with the Hennepin Center for the Arts to become the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, home to more than one dozen performing arts groups.

The Walker Art Center, one of the big five modern art museums in the U.S., sits atop Lowry Hill, near downtown. It doubled its size with an addition in 2005 by Herzog & de Meuron and is continuing its expansion to 15 acres (6.1 ha) with a park designed by Michel Desvigne across the street from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1915 in south central Minneapolis is the largest art museum in the city with 100,000 pieces in its permanent collection. New wings designed by Kenzo Tange opened in 1974 and Michael Graves in 2006 for contemporary and modern works and more gallery space. The Weisman Art Museum, designed by Frank Gehry for the University of Minnesota, opened in 1993. An addition which doubled the size of the galleries, also designed by Gehry, opened in 2011. The Museum of Russian Art opened in a restored church in 2005 and exhibits a collection of 20th century Russian art as well as lecture series, seminars, social functions and other special events.

The son of a jazz musician and a singer, Prince is Minneapolis' most famous musical progeny. With fellow local musicians, many of whom recorded at Twin/Tone Records, he helped make First Avenue and the 7th Street Entry venues of choice for both artists and audiences. Other prominent artists from Minneapolis include Hüsker Dü and The Replacements who were pivotal in the U.S. alternative rock boom during the 1990s. The Replacements' frontman, Paul Westerberg, went on to a successful solo career.

The Minnesota Orchestra plays classical and popular music at Orchestra Hall under music director Osmo Vänskä who has set about making it the best in the country—a critic writing for The New Yorker of a concert in 2010 thought that that day they were "the greatest orchestra in the world". In 2008, the century-old MacPhail Center for Music opened a new facility designed by James Dayton.

Tom Waits released two songs about the city, Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis (Blue Valentine 1978) and 9th & Hennepin (Rain Dogs 1985) and Lucinda Williams recorded Minneapolis (World Without Tears 2003). Home to the MN Spoken Word Association and independent hip-hop label Rhymesayers Entertainment, the city has garnered notice for rap and hip hop and its spoken word community. The underground hip-hop group Atmosphere (natives of Minnesota) frequently comments in song lyrics on the city and Minnesota.

In 2012, Food & Wine magazine named Minneapols America's best and best-priced new food city.

Minneapolis is America's third-most literate city. A center for printing and publishing, Minneapolis was a natural place for artists to build Open Book, the largest literary and book arts center in the U.S., made up of the Loft Literary Center, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Milkweed Editions, sometimes called the country's largest independent nonprofit literary publisher. The center exhibits and teaches both contemporary art and traditional crafts of writing, papermaking, letterpress printing and bookbinding.