Lanesboro Art Attractions Celebrate Milestone Anniversaries

By David Hennessey

MARK YOUR CALENDAR:

v Lanesboro Arts, 103 Parkway Ave North, hosts a 30th Anniversary Group Show, June 17 through August 13, and will host a formal celebration with dates to be announced.

v Commonweal Theatre, 208 Parkway Ave North, presents its 35th season with an apprentice project in March and mainstage productions from April through Christmas.

The Lanesboro area has a rich history in the arts, with two pillars within the community - Lanesboro Arts and The Commonweal Theatre .

Both have roots in the former Lanesboro Art Council and are celebrating major anniversaries this year. Lanesboro Arts is celebrating its 30-year anniversary and The Commonweal will be observing its 35th year in 2023.

Art Gallery’s 30th Anniversary

Encouraged by the interest their work attracted, the artists looked for a more permanent space. A Lanesboro native, then living in Texas, owned another building downtown. He had hoped to develop it into a business but couldn’t convince his wife to move to Minnesota because of its wintry climate. He agreed to make the space available to Lanesboro Arts for a reasonable amount.

Subsequently, in 1993, the Cornucopia Art Center opened: its name implying the abundant diversity of arts the organization wanted to promote. At its grand opening, visitors sampled exhib - its on both the main floor and balcony of the new space. For the first few years, the art center operated as a cooperative, serving member artists who all took turns staffing sales galleries and exhibits. Later, it hired a director and grew from representing just a few artists at the start to serving more than 70 artists today.

In 1980, the Lanesboro Art Council was formed, starting the annual Art in the Park festival and assuming ownership of the St. Mane Theatre, bringing performances and films to the previously dormant space. A decade later, several artists wanted a place to display their work. They eventually had permission to use one wall of what was then the creamery, also known as the “cheese factory,” downtown.

Merging with the Art Council in 2007 to become Lanesboro Arts, it now displays works for sale in every conceivable medium by artists from Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin and presents several art shows each year. It also presents films, music and community theatre performances at the St. Mane Theatre, and continues to host the annual Art in the Park event each June.

A regional economic asset, Lanesboro Arts is one reason Lanesboro is known to be an arts destination. In 1996, Lanesboro

Commonweal Theatre’s 35th Season

Meanwhile, in the mid-80s, volunteer enthusiasm for community performances at the St. Mane Theatre had lagged. The Art Council looked for new ways to program the space. They called on native son Eric Bunge from nearby Preston, who was in Denver studying for a master’s degree in theatre. He was asked if he would like to stage professional plays each summer in Lanesboro. He agreed to come if they made sorely needed building repairs: plastic pools on the stage collected leaks from the roof, and many seats had mold and mildew.

As repairs proceeded, Eric brainstormed names for a new theatre. Searching through the Merriam Webster dictionary, he found “commonwealth,” derived from “commonweal” meaning “for the public welfare.” was listed in The 100 Best Art Towns in America, and in 2014, the city passed a resolution declaring the entire town an Arts Campus. That campus now includes, among other things, the art gallery, a Poetry Parking Lot, a public library mural, wayfinding signs that promote walkability and Gateway Park, an outdoor venue for community events. z

“I thought if we can’t be for the public welfare, then we shouldn’t have a theater,” he said, and that settled it.

So, in 1989, the Commonweal opened an 11-week season playing Crimes of the Heart and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It employed 10 artists for 40 performances, played to 3,000 people, and brought in $20,782, which was about $200 more than they had spent. Buoyed by this success, they decided to keep going and slowly started to attract notice.

One visitor, Dan Rooney, discovered the theatre in 1990 when he and his wife looked at posters outside the venue. One of the actors “came out and greeted us… In the Twin Cities we went to hundreds of productions, and never had someone come out to talk about a show!” They soon became regular subscribers. In 2007, the Commonweal’s new 200-seat home replaced an abandoned building, right next door to the St. Mane. Today, with a $900,000 budget, it employs about 35 artists each season, 17 of whom live in the community. It stages five mainstage shows and one apprentice production annually. The 2019 attendance of 20,000 took a hit during the pandemic but, in 2022, had rebounded to 16,000 and is projected to reach 18,000 for 2023.

With the St. Mane still going strong too, it’s not unusual for this town of less than 800 people to see two – count ‘em, two – performances being produced simultaneously, side-by-side on different stages. This is another reason Lanesboro has a reputation of being one of the best arts towns!

Oh, and what was that abandoned building that the new Commonweal replaced? The humble first home of Cornucopia Art Gallery — the creamery — also known as the cheese factory. z