Minnesota businesses helped build the Guthrie Theater. But fewer of them are helping to maintain it.
Back in 1959, British director Tyrone Guthrie and two colleagues, disenchanted with New York City and dreaming of a regional theater, posted an ad in the New York Times inviting cities to take them up on their idea. They picked Minneapolis partly because of the support of young business leaders, said Joseph Haj, the Guthrie’s artistic director. “I could hardly exaggerate the huge contribution of the corporate sector in establishing and ensuring the viability of the Guthrie Theater.”
But that support has eroded. Over the past decade, the Guthrie, which posted a record $3.8 million deficit last year, has seen its corporate grants and sponsorships shrink by half.

Many of Minnesota’s stalwart arts organizations also have experienced steep declines. Some key Twin Cities businesses have stepped back their funding for the arts to focus on other priorities, creating a dramatic contraction not only in arts organizations’ budgets but seasons, venues and, some say, creativity.
Arts leaders warn that the consequences could hinder businesses’ ability to recruit here.
“Listen, nobody is coming to Minnesota for the weather or for the taxes,” Haj said. “They’re coming here because the quality of life and raising your kids and belonging to community are very high here, and that has a lot to do with our arts.”
For decades, Minnesota’s arts organizations enjoyed an “extraordinary” investment from its Fortune 500 companies, creating “a world-class arts scene that punches way above its weight in comparison to many larger cities,” said Christopher Stevens, the Walker Art Center’s chief of advancement. “So when the trend in corporate giving hit the United States, in a strange way it hit Minnesota harder. We had more to lose.”
At the Walker, grants and sponsorships from three big, locally rooted companies — Target, General Mills and Medtronic — used to total about $600,000 a year. None provides funding now.