Backstory: Bilbao on the Mississippi

The new Guthrie Theater here is wrapped in a dark blue glass-and-metal "skin" that at night reveals ghostly images from past stage productions. Its architecture includes a cantilevered "bridge to nowhere" that stretches toward the Mississippi River. On its roof looms a trio of LED-lit masts that, with some Shakespearian drama, announce featured plays.

Not far away, the new Walker Art Center makes a dramatic statement of its own with a crinkled aluminum exterior and curved walls that appear to make the building "move."

These are just two of several new buildings that are giving the land of 10,000 lakes, the Mall of America, Garrison Keillor, arctic winters, and folks who are "Minnesota nice" a new image - as an architectural and cultural mecca.

A series of major arts and cultural building projects in Minnesota's Twin Cities, designed by a half dozen architects with international reputations and costing half a billion dollars, hits its zenith this month with two grand openings. On June 10, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) opens a new wing created by renowned designer Michael Graves. Two weeks later, the striking new home of the Guthrie - 12 stories above the serpentine and slumberous Mississippi - will greet the public for the first time.

"This new crop of buildings is an effort to say, 'You know, the Twin Cities is not just a frozen city up in the middle of the northern plains, but in fact we have always been, and continue to be, a center for intellectual and cultural activity that can compete nationally,' " says Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Architecture at the University of Minnesota.

Noting these and several other major arts building projects, Travel + Leisure magazine has named Minneapolis one of its top five destinations for 2006, the only American city on the list, and Smithsonian Magazine lists Minneapolis-St. Paul among six hot travel spots this year. Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine now rates the Twin Cities No. 2 (after Nashville, Tenn.) among its "smartest places to live," citing its outstanding cultural amenities as one reason why.

"I can't say that I would have gone to Minneapolis before, but now it's a destination spot for me as an architect," says Ronnette Riley of New York. She's a member of the design committee of the American Institute of Architects, which is so excited about Minneapolis that it's planning to hold its 2007 meeting there.

The MIA and Guthrie projects join a new $125 million high-tech Minneapolis Central Library, designed by Cesar Pelli, which opened in May; a new wing for the Tony Award-winning Children's Theatre Company, also by Mr. Graves and completed last year; and the futuristic new addition to the Walker Art Center, designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning team of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron.

The Walker addition, whose architects created the Tate Modern museum in London, wins a rave from Ms. Riley, who likens it to an art object and praises its feminine curves and feeling of movement. "I always thought New York was the center of the universe. But now, I think, there are actually more iconic new buildings [in the Twin Cities]," says Riley, whose firm, Ronnette Riley Architects, looks out from a signature structure itself, the Empire State Building.

Still to come: a new addition to the Weisman Art Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota, to be designed by Frank Gehry, whose Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has put that city on many a tourist's itinerary.

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