City #1

There's an enormous crossover between people who visit art museums and people who read books. In fact, the more involved someone is in a museum, the more voracious they tend to be in their reading, and vice versa. As a publisher of books about art, I have to ask myself, Where are these people?

To lead me to the best places to find book readers interested in visual art, a few years ago I combined data on public participation in the arts, art museum membership, bookstore presence and other literary activities from several sources. The result was a ranked list of sixteen cities across the country, two geographic areas of interest, and two surprises locales where I thought the crossover would be strongest (all mapped here). Minneapolis-St. Paul was at the top of the list. and finally visiting for the first time myself (this past weekend for the Art Libraries Society annual conference) it's not hard to see why.

At the center of the art scene in Minneapolis-St. Paul there are two strong institutions. First, a very solid, completely thorough, general collection museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Second, a world-class (ie., one of the best in the world) contemporary art museum, the Walker Art Center. On top of that, there's the University of Minnesota's Weisman Art Museum (closed through the fall for a building expansion), a solid gallery scene, and the respected Minnesota College of Art and Design.

And for literature, the field is just as rich, or even more so. There's Open Book which houses the vibrant Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Loft Literary Center and indie trade press, Milkweed Editions. You'll also find other indies like Graywolf Press and Coffee House Press based in town too, and a great short-run book printer to take care of them all, BookMobile. There are a number of great independent bookstore's Magers & Quinn, Micawber's, Common Good Books and author Lousie Edrich's own Birchbark Books, among many others. And the Twin Cites even has its own dedicated book review magazine, one of the few left in the country and one of my favorites, Rain Taxi.

And for the crossover, just check out the art book selection at the Walker Art Center. Or at Magers & Quinn. Or BookSmart. Or James & Mary Laurie Bookseller…. Needless to say, I came home to Tucson last night with more books than I'd left with. Thanks Minneapolis-St. Paul, you're number one.

(Note: We've also updated our Art/Reading Travel Guide with some Twin Cities highlights. Have more for Minneapolis-St. Paul or elsewhere? Please add them!)

Art books not in the art section

Just visited Books Inc. in Palo Alto. It's a terrific little independent, but frankly, they have a terrible art section. This is true for their Mountain View store as well. However, browsing around a bit, I found quite a number of art-related titles in other sections of the store. A couple non-fiction and numerous art novels. Some featured on tables, several in the book club section, and one with the bargain books. In the end, looking beyond the meager shelves of the art section, the store turned out to be quite a treasure trove of books on art. The experience reminded me of a longstanding dream of mine to develop a mobile phone app that would offer art lovers and bookstore browsers ideas for art books: classics they might find in the art section, new releases they might find on feature tables, or novels in the fiction section, mysteries, books of poetry, etcetera.