Twin cities

MINNEAPOLIS -- It's Saturday night, and the Walker Art Center is packed.

Upstairs, in the new 385-seat McGuire Theatre, the renowned New York stage troupe Mabou Mines performs ''DollHouse," a deconstructive take on the Ibsen classic that features dwarves and full frontal nudity. During intermission, many ticket holders head down to the second floor for a quick drink at 20.21, the glass-walled restaurant overseen by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck.

Then there's the ground level, where about 1,500 people -- from white-haired patrons to a drag queen who goes by ''Didi 7" -- queue up for the opening night party of a show of Andy Warhol works about celebrities and disaster.

Jeff Hollander, a local mortgage broker and Walker member, still hasn't forgotten the last great bash he attended here. It was the April party thrown to celebrate the completion of a $73.8 million expansion.

''That night," says Hollander, 31, ''it made me proud to live here."

A pair of Bostonians were also at the April party. Jill Medvedow, the Institute of Contemporary Art's director, and David Henry, the ICA's head of programs, came to scope out the revamped Walker. After all, they were already deep into construction of the ICA's new home, with its distinctive, cantilevered design that stretches out to the South Boston waterfront. Medvedow and Henry tried the Walker's newest interactive exhibits, took notes on the staff's party-throwing skills, and considered what could be brought to Boston.

Most of all, they watched in awe as the weeklong celebration drew thousands to the downtown art center, which blends the Walker's 34-year-old brick building with a towering, aluminum-skinned box that borders busy Hennepin Avenue.

Unlike the ICA, which is taking its first step into a proper space, the Walker is a long-established center of cultural activity, with a $187 million endowment. Its brick building drew national attention when it opened in 1971.

The expansion adds 130,000 square feet, doubling the Walker's size and making it possible to hold several events at the same time and to stage new exhibits without moving parts of the permanent collection. Key additions include the theater, the restaurant, a shop, rooftop terraces, and a ''town square" for visitors to gather.

Medvedow was impressed.

''It seemed like the entire city of Minneapolis was celebrating," she said. ''That's something I would love to see in Boston."

She might just get her wish next September when the ICA opens its new doors.

Yet, as with the Walker in Minneapolis, the ICA is not the only project in town. Boston is in the midst of an arts building boom, with expansions or new buildings underway at the Children's Museum, Museum of Science, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The Museum of Fine Arts is raising $500 million for its plan, slated to be finished by 2010.

In Minneapolis, much of that kind of growth -- though on a slightly smaller scale -- has already taken place. The Walker project and the October completion of a $24 million expansion of the Children's Theatre Company -- considered the premier of its kind in the country -- have set in motion a series of openings that include the Minneapolis Public Library (spring of 2006), the $50 million expansion of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (June 2006), and the new $125 million Guthrie Theater (June of 2006). The stainless steel Weisman Art Museum, part of the University of Minnesota, will announce an expansion later this winter. Frank Gehry will design it.

Samuel Trask, 29, is a graphic designer and recent MassArt graduate. Trask moved to Minneapolis when his partner enrolled at the University of Minnesota. ''Years ago, this was a city no one would have paid attention to," he said while nursing a drink at the Warhol opening.

Minneapolis and Boston have never been thought of as sister cities. Boston is a tourist destination, steeped in red brick and Colonial history and university life. Perhaps unfairly, its wealthiest individuals have a reputation for thrift, and the city hasn't built a new museum in almost a century. Minneapolis is an unromantic model of the best the Midwestern economy has to offer. By virtue of its spot on the Mississippi, the city became a center of economic activity, with most of the region's grain heading here to be sent on barges down the river.

What the two have in common are essential historic figures who embraced the arts. In 1879, lumberman Thomas Barlow Walker founded the Walker. Two years later, Henry Lee Higginson created the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

One city's current arts boom may offer lessons to the other's. Some are literal -- the placement of an information booth in a lobby, a high-tech gallery guide created especially for the new Walker. Others are found in the development and membership offices, where museums work to draw more visitors and attract donors.

It's the fund-raising climate in Minneapolis that left an impression on MFA director Malcolm Rogers two years ago when he took a group of building committee members to tour the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. While smaller than the MFA, the MIA aspires to offer the same sort of comprehensive collection.

''What's happened in Minneapolis does show there's a great opportunity in Boston to develop more corporate leadership," Rogers says.

The concept Rogers continually tries to push -- that a lively arts scene can help companies recruit workers -- is simply accepted as fact in Minnesota, says Tom Fisher, dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Design at the University of Minneapolis School of Design and the former editor of Progressive Architecture.

''There's a sense of 'we have to try harder,' because we are in fly-over country," says Fisher. ''People think the weather is terrible, though it isn't. And we're the most isolated large city in the country. In Boston, you can get to New York or Providence very easily. Here, the closest city is Chicago, and it's seven hours away. As a result, if you want a rich life, you have to generate all this culture."

This philosophy drove a group of local business leaders to pool their resources long before capital campaigns and endowment drives entered the lexicon of museum management. In 1946, members of the Dayton family -- who ran the department stores that would eventually morph into Target -- founded the ''Five Percent Club." To be a member, local businesses had to give 5 percent of their federally taxable income to support nonprofits.

''The founding mothers and fathers knew about Richard Florida before he was born," says Walker director Kathy Halbreich, referring to the George Mason University professor whose theories on the ''creative class" have been used by arts leaders to convince government officials to support new projects. ''These corporations knew they had to create a cultural magnet. Part of the reason they give to the arts is so that they can bring smart, young people here."

Over the years, many local companies -- Target, for example -- have gone public or been sold by the families that created them. But the key, Minneapolis arts leaders say, is that the region remains a headquarter town, not a branch office.

''Target is doing a better job now than we did," says Bruce Dayton, now 87 and still a key supporter of the MIA. ''Things change, but I have no reason to give up hope."

William W. McGuire, one of the outsiders making an impact, is a transplant who was born in New York, was raised in Texas, and earned $124.8 million last year as the chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group, according to Forbes. The Walker's new theater is named after McGuire and his wife, Nadine, who gave the art center $10 million and were honored at the April opening. The McGuires also gave $10 million to both the Guthrie and the University of Minnesota.

Speaking at a Starbucks near his home, McGuire dismissed the idea that he and his wife give because the Daytons, or anybody, told them to. He also isn't particularly impressed by the region's historic generosity.

If he had his way, people would give more.

''It's our belief that it is beneficial to have exposure to the arts," said McGuire, a towering figure with neatly cut, almost white hair. ''To the extent that we have those things, we think it is important that they be the best they can be."

The attitude in Minneapolis seems to differ from Boston-style philanthropy; it's hard to imagine such major arts philanthropists as Fidelity head Edward C. ''Ned" Johnson or cable magnate Amos Hostetter making a public appeal, let alone appearing at a ribbon cutting.

Also crucially different is the pool of potential givers in the two cities.

As of last year, Minnesota had 18 Fortune 500 companies, including Target, 3M, and General Mills. Massachusetts, in contrast, has 11 companies on the list. And that number has decreased over the last decade, largely due to corporate mergers. In Minnesota, the number has held steady. That gives Boston's museums, and all of the city's nonprofit organizations, fewer options as they seek corporate donors.

The Fortune 500 figures make the campaign progress in Boston all the more impressive, says MIA Asian art curator Bob Jacobsen. As his own museum grows, he's been paying close attention to the MFA. He's impressed by what he hears about the museum's fund-raising.

''This is great for Boston," says Jacobsen. ''It's been a pretty sleepy major museum for a long time."

If he has one piece of advice for his colleagues in Boston, it is to remember that they can't simply rest on their fund-raising successes.

''It isn't about the size of the building, it's what you put in that building," says Jacobsen. ''The audience isn't going to just show up because they're told there's great art on the walls."

Halbreich agrees. The Walker's director, whose black nail polish matches her hair, says the art center's success can't be measured right now. Opening years always bring a rise in attendance and attention. It is what happens next that matters more.

And Halbreich, who was the MFA's curator of contemporary art and director of MIT's List Visual Arts Center before heading to the Walker in 1991, has advice for the ICA. According to the museum's projections, the new building will have to attract 200,000 visitors -- five times its highest total over the last decade -- to break even during its first year on Fan Pier.

She doesn't feel comfortable commenting specifically on those numbers. But she does worry about the ICA, which will be a pioneer on the still-underdeveloped waterfront.

''I hope the trustees have a bit of courage to be patient, because it's the right decision," she counsels. ''It just may take a while for the market to catch up with them."

While the new ICA can't match the Walker's size and scope, it can cherry-pick some of the Walker's programs when it opens. That makes sense since Henry, who will oversee film, media, and performing arts programming at the ICA, worked for eight years at the Walker. He left in 1995 to take a position at the Rhode Island School of Design and joined the ICA last year to develop the expanded programming that will go into the new building.

In particular, Henry plans to replicate a program for teens run by teens. He also wants to develop a version of the Walker's family programs, including one that allows children and parents into the museum for free on the first Saturday of each month. Henry just isn't sure whether the ICA can yet afford to not charge admission.

The ICA's programming plans are largely still under wraps. The museum did announce last month that Boston CRASHarts, a division of World Music Inc., will program 10 weeks of performances in the museum's new theater during the ICA's first eight months.

Henry makes it clear that the ICA won't simply imitate the Walker. In fact, not everything Henry saw there was, in his opinion, worth celebrating.

Take the center's Dialog Table, which Henry and Medvedow were shown by its designers. The table features a series of miniature people on a monitor who, when manipulated by a pinching motion by museum visitors, reveal information about a work of art.

The table won first place in a Walker competition in 2002. But even with one of those designers instructing, the ICA visitors found the table unwieldy. Henry said the ICA decided after the Walker visit not to use similar technology for an information wall the museum had been planning.

Henry also isn't sure about the layout of the expanded museum. The gallery spaces remain largely in the older building, with the new section used for the bookstore, theater, and restaurant.

''From the outside, the new building is really visible," said Henry. ''From the inside, I just don't know if it's going to be used as much."

The night of the Warhol party, however, pretty much every part of the Walker seems to be humming. Just past 10, members of the ''DollHouse" cast are heading in to check out the exhibition.

Upstairs, on the eighth floor of the new Gallery Tower, a singer billing himself as Edie Sedgwick performs in a short, silvery skirt and ripped nylons. He shouts out odes to Christian Slater and Haley Joel Osment as music blares from his iPod.

After the performance, the late stragglers head outside. Under a three-quarter moon, the Walker's new building looks like an ice cube made of crepe paper.

Some partygoers head to the parking garage. Others walk across the adjacent Loring Park and past the Café Lurcat, where a jazz singer in a black dress performs with a trio. It's late, but just a few blocks up Hennepin, the neon lights of downtown Minneapolis call.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.