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Home > News & Events > CLA Today Archive > Winter 2006 : A Vital Priority

A Vital Priority

The President Takes Stock of the Arts at the University of Minnesota

With the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum hugging the cliffs above the Mississippi River and the Regis Center for Art and Barbara Barker Center for Dance anchoring the south edge of the West Bank, the University of Minnesota greets visitors with an artistic face. Since the arts permeate the University, that's an apt first impression.

On any given day, the University's Twin Cities campus showcases an abundance of artistic talent, ranging from theater to dance to music to the visual arts, in venues as varied as the Barker Center, Rarig Center, Ted Mann Concert Hall, and the Goldstein Museum of Design.

The University is a full partner with the cultural institutions—such as the Guthrie Theater and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra—that put Minnesota on the artistic map, and the U is a destination for internationally renowned artists of every genre. We are also a premier artistic training ground. The University contributes greatly, for example, to our region's reputation as a world-class center for ceramics, and to its thriving dance and theater scene. (I've heard Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling remind people of the University theater faculty's key role in bringing Sir Tyrone Guthrie to the Twin Cities and founding the prestigious theater.)

Magnet for Creativity

The creative wealth of our region has led economist Richard Florida to identify the Twin Cities as one of the ten most vibrant urban centers in the country. In Florida's assessment, the University of Minnesota serves as a magnet for talent, attracting the mobile, wealth-creating people he calls the creative class and contributing significantly to our area's long-term economic vitality. Our contribution to the arts is an essential aspect of Minnesota's vibrant economy and quality of life.

It would be a mistake, however, to justify the arts primarily by their economic impact. Throughout history, the arts have been recognized as essential to a life well and thoughtfully lived. They are at the core of the world's great universities, including ours, and they stimulate imagination and vigor in other academic fields. The central artistic question "What if?" is also fundamental to hypothesis, discovery, and breakthrough in the laboratory and the library. And it is a question that is answered better—more completely, relevantly, and effectively—the more creatively developed is the thinker who seeks to answer it.

The President's Initiative on the Arts and Humanities, one of eight academic initiatives I commissioned to encourage work across academic departments and colleges, was explicitly designed to build on the excitement and artistic innovation burgeoning in the West Bank Arts Quarter and elsewhere on campus. The dynamic international conference on the arts held in late 2004, the Institute for Advanced Study that opened this fall, and the recruitment of extraordinary scholars, artists, and teachers to join the ranks of our outstanding faculty are just a few of the Initiative's exciting developments.

A thriving artistic community is key to the University's relevance and its reputation for excellence. Attaining our goal of becoming one of the top public research universities in the world requires not only achievements in medicine, technology, and engineering, but also, equally, the creative works of our scholars, artists, dancers, actors, and musicians, and the opportunities they give us to ponder "What if" in unexpected and powerful ways. I hope that you will visit the West Bank Arts Quarter to see how our artists take on that question.

Robert Bruininks
President, University of Minnesota