Arts and Culture : Featured Stories

Not-to-miss Fringe shows, a neighborhood happy hour, beer and bikes…a few of our favorite things for August arts and culture.    

Farm-fresh produce, handmade books on a floating library, historic walking tours along the Green Line and feasting locally are our top picks for July arts and culture in MSP.   

A new campus renovation announced this past spring will better connect the Walker Art Center with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, reinvigorating a longstanding city and art center partnership.

MSP boasts a cultural milieu in which diverse art forms, architecture and design take root and flourish. Metalsmithing, which includes jewelry design, is an integral part of the culture.

Festivals galore during the month of June, just a few of them listed here. There's the big one--Northern Spark 2016--as well as smaller neighborhood gatherings and opportunities to make new friends over food and brews.  

Since they began farming in Vermillion Township in 2014, HAFA's members have introduced Minnesotan palates to new flavors, seen production and profits increase exponentially, and cultivated a greater sense of community.

In declaring 2016 the Year of Music, the City of St. Paul showcases all of the music genres, schools, initiatives and venues thriving throughout the city as economic drivers and cultural amenities.

Makers—the artists, entrepreneurs, innovators (aren’t they all the same?) who brighten lives with their joy of creativity and aesthetic panache—highlight May’s selections. Art-A-Whirl, of course. But the MSP Maker Faire is big news, too.  

The second article in our two-part series about the diverse people and companies that helped build the Minneapolis-St. Paul theater community.

Lowertown boasts a growing roster of relocated and expanded businesses—some from the suburbs, others spun out of Lowertown’s COCO, and some born and bred in the district’s office lofts and storefronts.  

This month we include the nationally recognized American Crafts Council Show, a bonanza of handcrafted items; a tour of a transformed warehouse in the North Loop; an all-women record release and cultural revision; and a good way to celebrate Earth Month.

We introduce the first in a two-part series about how MSP became the second-largest theater region after New York, as well as mobile, inventive and idiosyncratic.

The arts real-estate nonprofit Artspace is re-scaling its work to take a more geographic approach that includes consulting with a cohort of art organizations in Detroit and developing creative districts in rural Colorado. 

New research reveals the catalytic role that libraries and museums are playing in rebuilding troubled neighborhoods. These important  "anchor institutions" are helping drive economic, educational and social efforts in their neighborhoods.

This month's arts and culture branches out to include a new brew from the women-owned Urban Growler. That's not only the reason St. Paul is the place to be. Right: St. Patrick's Day.