How an industrial city along the Mississippi River transformed itself into an arts town

WINONA, MINN. – If the “object of art is to give life shape,” as Shakespeare once said, then this small southeastern Minnesota city is putting those words into tangible action.

Long known as a hub for manufacturing, shipping and outdoor recreation, Winona over the past two decades has become an unexpected destination for some of the most celebrated artistic endeavors in the Upper Midwest.

As the city of about 26,000 people works to revitalize its historic downtown, the arts are taking center stage with several multimillion-dollar projects poised to reshape Winona into the area’s creative capital.

At the center of the transformation is the $60 million Minnesota Masterpiece Hall rising along 5th Street. Funded through a philanthropic gift from the late Bob Kierlin, the co-founder of Fastenal, the publicly traded global industrial supplier, and his wife, Mary Burrichter, the 70,000-square-foot building will house a state-of-the-art concert hall, as well as an art gallery showcasing works from Pablo Picasso to Henri Matisse.

Masterpiece Hall isn’t expected to open until 2026, but already it’s spurring excitement over what local leaders hope will become an arts corridor downtown.

Two blocks down the road, work is under way to renovate the Historic Masonic Theatre, where a coalition of arts groups led by the Great River Shakespeare Festival hope to build a more permanent presence for local arts.

The two projects promise to not only catalyze the downtown economy, but solidify a sense of cultural identity around the arts, said Aaron Young, managing director of the city’s Shakespeare Festival.

“There’s nothing that creates pride in a community like having the arts going on,” Young said. “There are a lot of people that are into sports and so on, and that’s fine. But for a lot of people in Winona, it’s like, ‘my city has a Shakespeare Festival.’”

The roots of Winona’s creative boom can be traced to the confluence of civic planning and philanthropy more than 20 years ago.

First, it was the Shakespeare Festival in 2004. Then the Marine Art Museum in 2006. A year later, the city hosted its first Minnesota Beethoven Festival.

They’ve become pillars of the city’s art scene, with the Marine Art Museum — regarded as one of the top museums in the Midwest — alone welcoming more than 30,000 visitors annually.

“If this was in Chicago or Washington or New York, I think it would probably still stand out as a great museum,” said Scott Pollock, the museum’s executive director. “But it really adds to Winona’s identity in a special way that you just couldn’t replicate in a bigger city.”

In recent years, the museum has received national attention for notable exhibitions, including Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware”, and a 1,275-foot panorama believed to be the longest painting in North America.

Recently it has aimed to be more reflective of the community and its relationship to the river. That has included showcasing more Minnesota artists, Pollock said, and adding programming for kids and individuals with memory loss.

“We are kind of straddling the two worlds,” Pollock said. “You can go super fine art, gold framed; you can go very contemporary. And you can kind of come to something in between where a toddler can make a piece of art.”

It’s a sentiment shared by Young, the Shakespeare Festival director, who said Winona’s creative scene has thrived not only because of the quality of the art, but also by ensuring it remains accessible for as many people as possible.

The festival, scheduled to begin in June, encourages the nearly 100 actors who descend on Winona annually to interpret Shakespeare in their own way, helping make the content more understandable for a modern audience.

“We get rid of a lot of the artifice, and we don’t use phony accents,” Young said. “And when people understand Shakespeare, they really love it.”

The Shakespeare and Beethoven festivals, each of which expect upward of 8,000 attendees this summer, are now among a lineup of more than a dozen annual art events in Winona that include the Frozen River Film Festival, Boats and Bluegrass and this weekend’s Mid West Music Fest.

For many Winona businesses, the emergence of an arts culture has been both a source of local pride and a boon to their bottom lines.

Lori Nagle, manager of the Acoustic Cafe, a staple of downtown Winona for more than three decades, said the regular festivals and art tours have helped revitalize a downtown that had lost some life as businesses moved out to strip malls with ample parking. She has in recent years seen a trend toward more shops and restaurants opening downtown to cater to the travelers seeking out Winona for the arts.

“It just puts us in a different perspective that this is a little hip town,” Nagle said. “And when people come here for an event, they’re also going to the shops, they’re sightseeing and they’re spending money.”

Daryl Lanz, a former teacher and theater director who now owns Chapter 2 Books, said that when he grew up summers would be Winona’s slow season, with students at Winona State University and St. Mary’s University gone for the season.

“When I started this business, I was really surprised to find that my summers are my busy time,” Lanz said. “And I attribute that primarily to tourists and people coming back year after year after year for arts events and festivals.”

The arts industry collectively generates at least $4.7 million a year in economic impact, according to the city’s 2022 Arts and Culture Strategic Plan.

That’s not by accident, said Ned Kirk, CEO of the Masterpiece Hall project, noting that Kierlin, whose philanthropy helped create the Marine Art Museum and Masterpiece Hall, saw the projects foremost as a catalyst for economic development. Kierlin died in February at the age of 85.

“He never did any of these to make money; they were all about being catalysts to develop the community,” Kirk said. “And in these cases, the vehicle for him to do that was the arts.”

While the Marine Art Museum may have put Winona on the arts and culture map, Masterpiece Hall has the potential to solidify the city’s reputation as a national arts destination, Kirk said.

The 730-seat concert hall has been designed with every detail in mind, with acoustics, staging and seating all engineered to match what one might expect from a Broadway theater or Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis.

“I can find no precedent anywhere for having an organization that is presenting high-level masterwork paintings and high-level internationally recognized concert artists all under one roof as a shared identity,” Kirk said.

On the surface, the addition of Masterpiece Hall might stand in contrast to the scrappy nature of the art being produced at the Masonic Theatre.

But for Winona’s arts supporters, it’s all part of a cohesive vision for an arts district that includes the Winona Public Library and Winona State University’s Laird Norton Building.

“I think it’s important for the public to realize that art happens here,” Young said. “It doesn’t just get imported to Winona, but art is created here.”

The city is spending about $3 million to improve the HVAC systems of the Masonic Theatre, with the goal that the building will provide office space for arts groups and a venue for year-round programming.

The art groups have a five-year lease on the city-owned building that will cost them $1,500 a month.

“It will be great if somebody could come in here and get tickets for a festival, see an art exhibit and watch a play under one roof,” said Margaret Shaw Johnson, a retired judge who serves on the city’s Creative Winona Commission. “Because in Winona, there’s a lot of cooperation among the groups. Where you might expect to see competition, I just see coordination.”

Young said he fields questions often about why he doesn’t want to work in New York or Los Angeles or another city with a rich history for the arts.

The answer, he said, is an easy one.

“People in Winona show up, they care, and they are just as deserving of high-quality art as anywhere else.”

Want to learn more about the relationship between the arts and the economy in Winona? Join us on the campus of Winona State University on May 22 for a discussion featuring Scott Pollock, executive director of the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, and Aaron Young, managing director of the Great River Shakespeare Festival. Register now because space is limited.