Minneapolis, let it be known that you are winning us over with your cosmopolitan charm. At the end of this month, the University of Minnesota’s Design Institute and Department of Art History are teaming up to bring a pretty spectacular lineup of design-savvy folk to the design-savvy town. They’ll be discussing the way design and architecture is perceived, namely through the conduits of mass media and museums at “Design and Its Publics: Curators, Critics, and Historians” April 27 and 28.

Speakers include Paola Antonelli, MoMA; Ole Bouman, Netherlands Architecture Institute; Brooke Hodge, MOCA; Deyan Sudjic, London Design Museum; Frances Anderton, KCRW’s “DnA”; and the conference will be moderated by Janet Abrams, Steven F. Ostrow, and Tom Fisher.

Plus, the event is free and open to the public. Because even though Minneapolis is big-city fabulous, they’ve still got good, old-fashioned Midwestern values.