ArtPlace America, a three-year-old Chicago-based consortium of public and private arts funders, has included three Minnesota projects in its 2013-14 round of grants totalling $52 million.

Two arts projects in St. Paul and one in Lanesboro, Minn., have each received six-figure amounts for efforts toward "creative placemaking."

Bedlam Theatre received $350,000 to develop a Lowertown space designed to serve as an arts nexus for the Central Corridor light rail.

Blue Ox, an artists' collective, also got $350,000 to construct a mini-golf course as the anchor attraction on a 15-acre redevelopment of teh Schmidt brewery site.

The city of Lanesboro in southeastern Minnesota received $313,000 toward its ambitious "arts campus" project, which aims to transform the city into one big arts experience.

This is the third grant cycle for ArtPlace, which has previously funded five other projects in Minnesota, for a total (including the above) of $3,073,000.