Mill City Cornerstones Mentioned on Arts.gov

NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman is spending 6 months traveling around the country to learn how art works in neighborhoods and towns across America.

(left to right - (l-r) Justin Huenemann, NACDI President and CEO; Sue Gens, Minnesota State Arts Board Executive Director; Heid Erdrich, Author; and Vickie Benson, McKnight Foundation Arts Programming Director (and President of the Board of Directors, Grantmakers in the Arts).

He just returned from a tour of the Twin Cities, where his host was the McKnight Foundation, right here in the Mill District.  He also spent time visting the Guthrie Theater and the MacPhail Center for Music:

We began our next day, in Minneapolis, with a breakfast at the McKnight Foundation, our host throughout the day. I met Mayor R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis, who’s been there a long time and really gets it. We talked about how you have to have a local political structure that’s dialed in, and Mayor Rybak totally understands the importance of the arts in the community. He was very generous with his time, very open and welcoming.

After breakfast, we took a tour of the impressive Guthrie Theater with my old friend Joe Dowling, and then we had a tour of the MacPhail Center for Music with David O’Fallon. At MacPhail, they’re doing a lot of interesting work with music and cognition and the role of music and art—both in very early child development and in geriatrics. We’re hoping that that may be a point of intersection with us and with the Department of Health and Human Services, and we want to know much more about the work the center is doing.

Read the whole article on Arts.gov - http://www.arts.gov/artworks/?p=3816