April 29, 2025
by Abby Bulger, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal
Story Highlights
- Art-A-Whirl celebrates 30th anniversary with 1,400 artists across NE Mpls.
- Event offers studio tours in 100+ locations
- Attendance has grown from 30,000 to 120,000 since 2013.
Art-A-Whirl, the largest open studio tour in the country, is gearing up to celebrate its 30th anniversary this May with more than 100 locations and 1,400 artists across northeast Minneapolis.
Put on by the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association (NEMAA), Art-A-Whirl pulls back the curtain on artist studios in Northeast over the course of one weekend in May. This year, the event will take place Friday through Sunday starting May 16.
Art-A-Whirl came about in the mid-90s, when many Minneapolis artists were losing their studio spaces in the North Loop neighborhood due to rising rents and redevelopment of the area. Forced to find cheaper spaces to make their art, artists turned to the industrial neighborhood of Northeast and its wide array of vacant factory buildings.
The shift helped transform properties like the Thorp Building and the Northrup King Building into thriving hubs for art. A group of artists in the Thorp Building, located at 1618 Central Ave. NE, held the first Art-A-Whirl when they opened their new spaces to studio tours.
NEMAA, a 501c arts nonprofit, was founded not long after in 2003 and became integral to forming the arts district. To participate in Art-A-Whirl as an artist or business, one must be a member of NEMAA. In 2013, the group had 530 members; today it has 1,600 of which 1,400 are artists and 200 are businesses.
Membership pricing, which varies from $55 to $110 annually for artists (or free for student artists) to $350 for businesses, represents about one-quarter of the organization’s annual budget. The rest is comprised of a diverse array of income streams, including sponsorships and advertising at the event, grants, donations and the occasional merchandise sale.
“There are about four or five different legs on this stool to keep the organization stable,” Anna Becker, the executive director of NEMAA, explained.
Becker joined in 2013 and has watched in real time as Art-A-Whirl grew bigger every year in size and national acclaim: it was featured in The New York Times last year. When Becker began working with the event, an estimated 30,000 people attended over the course of the weekend; last year boasted an estimated 120,000.
The spaces involved in Art-A-Whirl are all independently owned, featuring lots of buildings that are specifically for studio spaces, like the California or Holland Arts Buildings. However, if a guest artist has no permanent studio space, NEMAA will set them up with a temporary place to show their work, most commonly in a space from one of its business members.
Increasing event size does not come without growing pains, however, one of which is mitigating the intense traffic and parking issues that come along with more than 100,000 people wandering around Northeast. This year, Art-A-Whirl is introducing a passport app to help attendees navigate the map, as well as offering free metro transit passes and free trolley rides around the neighborhood.
For its 30 th anniversary, Art-A-Whirl is also featuring 30 artists of a variety of mediums on its website, complete with in-depth interviews, pictures of their work and where to find them during the event.
