Cooler but still well above normal this week

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Several milestones await patrons of the Twin Cities arts community in 2015. It will be a year of big happenings, significant changes and at least one major farewell.


• This will be the year of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Centennial. The museum is planning a yearlong party involving Leonardo da Vinci's scientific drawings, treasures of the Habsburg Empire and an exhibit on the influence of Eugene Delacroix on French painting in the 19th century. 

In case you aren't familiar with his work, Mothersbaugh co-founded the seminal art rock band Devo in the '70s. In the years since then, he's composed the music for hit movies and TV shows, including "Pee-wee's Playhouse" and films by Wes Anderson. He's also a prolific visual artist. He'll show more than a thousand pieces of his work at the MIA, including a carpet of postcards he's used for years instead of a journal.

Mothersbaugh said he's honored to be included in the same celebration as da Vinci. "I hope he's OK with it," he said during a recent scouting trip to the museum. "I'm certainly happy about it."

The MIA has raised $6 million for the celebration, which will involve weekly birthday surprises like unannounced appearances of major artworks, pop-up appearances of reproductions of MIA treasures in the community and impromptu musical performances in the galleries. The first surprise will be revealed Jan. 1. 


• The MIA's close neighbor, the Walker Art Center, is celebrating its 75th anniversary with a series of exhibits, including a show of 75 pieces given as gifts over the years.  

• Across the river in St. Paul, a new era at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts begins in late February with the opening of its new concert hall. Ordway President Patricia Mitchell promises a party there, too.

"Twenty-two days of opening nights," she said.

Custom designed for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the intimate, 1,100-seat hall will also present other acoustic music. It will free up the Ordway's main stage and solve scheduling problems that have long bedeviled the Ordway's principal tenants: the SPCO, the Schubert Club, the Minnesota Opera and the Ordway itself.  

A capital campaign raised $80 million to build the hall and create an endowment to help pay for programming. SPCO President Bruce Coppock said the success of the campaign shows how the people of Minnesota can get things done. 

"It's absolutely extraordinary," he said. "It's a huge community victory." 

• One of the much-anticipated productions during the Ordway's opening month is the Minnesota Opera's world premiere adaptation of "The Manchurian Candidate." It's the work of librettist Mark Campbell and composer Kevin Puts, the team behind the opera's celebrated "Silent Night" two years ago. 

Campbell said the Cold War political thriller, about an American brainwashed into becoming an unwitting assassin, is perfect for opera "because of the intense themes and intense characters in the story," he said. "They are all obsessed about something."

• At the Guthrie, Artistic Director Joe Dowling is prepping something a little lighter, at least initially. As he wraps up a 20-year career at Minnesota's flagship theater, Dowling will direct three major productions, starting with a remounting of his "A Midsummer Night's Dream." 

He'll follow with distinctly heavier shows: Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" and, finally, Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock." 

Dowling's successor is expected to be named early in the year. Whoever it is, the new director will wield huge influence in local theater. Dowling has deliberately kept away from the process and knows only that the selection committee has been working hard.

"And that they have identified some candidates that they are very excited about, and we'll see what happens," Dowling said.

All of these things will have an impact on Minnesota arts in 2015 — and these are just the developments that have been planned in advance. As anyone in the local arts scene will tell you, the only constant is change.

Arts and Culture

Minnesota News

Twin Cities News

Shows

Morning Edition

Euan Kerr

Author

Two major museums celebrate big birthdays, and a major theater director says farewell.

Already, '15 looks like a big year for the arts

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox