Austin Area Arts

Public art has become more common in cities and towns around the Midwest. Sculpture and mural walks or art trails are growing attractions.

Austin, Minnesota has a really incredible story of how revitalization formed the base of the public art in the community.  Laura Helle is Executive Director of Austin Area Arts.

An Introduction to Austin

Austin, Minnesota, is a moderately sized city of about 26,000 people on the rolling prairie of southern Minnesota.

“It’s not what you’d call a metropolitan but I say a thriving, vibrant small city,” says Helle. “I actually grew up on a farm five miles outside of town. There were a thousand people in the town, so to me it’s like, we have all the basics. We have a library and Marshalls . . . what else do you need? So it’s not what you consider your typical Metro, but it has a long tradition of excellence in the arts, in all kinds of arts, including music and visual arts.”

Public Art in Austin, Minnesota

Austin has an impressive amount of public art on display, including murals and statues. “When you come, just keep your eyes peeled,” says Helle. “We have a bank that has an incredible huge mosaic on the outside of it, just a private bank. And also through Discover Austin, Minnesota, you can find our statue tour. There’s a map that you can use to go through town and see all the different outdoor statues. So you could certainly plan for it or you can make it a little bit more like a scavenger hunt and just see what you see as you’re there, but there is art everywhere.”

The Transformation of the Paramount Theater

The historic Paramount Theater in Austin was built in 1929 and operated as a movie theater showing first-run movies until 1972.

“It was one of those atmosphere theaters where when you walk in, you’re transported to another place in time,” says Helle. “So it looked like a Spanish villa under the stars. There’s a domed ceiling that’s painted blue and star lights shine through and sometimes clouds can move across the ceiling.”

After going out of business as a movie theater, it changed hands a number of times, including one owner who turned it into a nightclub and painted everything black. Then in 1990, after the building had been vacant for several years, a group of arts lovers came together in the hopes of making it into a performing arts space. The group banded together and purchased The Paramount.

“My favorite tidbit about that is they couldn’t find a bank that would take a chance on the mortgage, so they ended up having half the mortgage at two different banks,” says Helle. “I mean, find a way, make a way.”

After purchasing the theater, the group was slowly able to refurbish it back to how it looked when it was first built. Then they started holding performing arts in the space.

“We have an organization called Matchbox Children’s Theater, and one of the former leaders of Matchbox told me that for the first few shows they just told people to bring lawn chairs because they had a stage and they had an auditorium but they didn’t have any seats in the auditorium. So it was ‘Bring your own chair — but we’re doing theater,’ ” says Helle.

Austin ArtWorks Festival

In 2011, a group in Austin started doing some future visioning about what were some things they could get done to improve the community by the year 2020. They called their group Vision 2020. One of the results of this group was the Austin ArtWorks Festival, founded in 2012, and now annually the last weekend in August.

“We bring in fine arts, exhibitors, have an author stage, live music, stage arts demonstrations–anything you can think of arts-related–and it’s in the heart of downtown,” says Helle.

Austin ArtWorks Center

In 2014, the Austin ArtWorks Center was brought to life.

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