Jean Mineo Is Building a Place Where a Medfield Student Can Grow From First Lesson to First Stage

MEDFIELD, Mass. For a few years, people who toured the empty Lee Chapel on the grounds of the old Medfield State Hospital left talking about a stage that did not exist yet. "It gets them very excited about what's coming," Jean Mineo said of those tours in 2025. A year later the stage is under construction, and Mineo, executive director of Bellforge Arts Center, is steering the work toward an opening in fall 2027.

The road to that point ran through town government. Medfield bought 128 acres of the former hospital from the state in 2014 for $3.1 million. A committee delivered a master plan in 2018, and Town Meeting approved new zoning and adopted the plan the following year. In 2020, Bellforge secured a 99 year lease on two buildings: the chapel and the infirmary next door.

Mineo came to that table with deep roots. A Medfield resident since 2004, she had chaired the Medfield Cultural Council and spent close to a decade running the Boston Sculptors Gallery. During the redevelopment planning she approached Paul Armstrong, chief executive of the music company Redefined, about booking live shows on the grounds. Armstrong became Bellforge's artistic director. "We're putting a stake in the ground for culture," Mineo told the Boston Globe in 2023.

The first outdoor season, in the summer of 2022, brought more than 10,000 people to the field. By the time of the groundbreaking in June 2026, the four outdoor seasons had drawn more than 42,000 visitors to concerts and festivals, among them the New England Americana Festival and annual Pride and Juneteenth celebrations.

What Mineo talks about most, though, is learning. "We think about this arc of support from where students are starting out learning an instrument or voice, theater, to where performers are starting to launch their careers," she said. The renovated Infirmary, about 8,000 square feet across three floors, will hold 17 classrooms, practice rooms and studios built for that path.

Next door, the 18,000 square foot chapel becomes a flexible 300 seat hall with retractable seating, expandable staging and live streaming. A 2,400 square foot backstage addition brings green rooms, and a 5,200 square foot glass connector ties the two buildings together with a main entrance, lobby, gallery and catering kitchen. DBVW Architects designed the project, and Delphi Construction of Waltham is the general contractor.

Bellforge organizes its programs around five disciplines: theater, music, visual arts, dance and culinary arts, with culinary and visual arts expected in a later phase. Mineo sees the mix as the point. Putting those artists within walking distance of one another, she said, should create "conditions for collaborations that we haven't even thought of yet."

Paying for it has been a community effort. The full preservation project carries a $30 million price tag, and Bellforge's capital campaign has set a $25 million goal. The organization reports $20.7 million raised so far, from foundations, local and regional businesses and more than 1,000 Massachusetts households. State Senator Becca Rausch, State Representatives Joshua Tarsky and Marcus Vaughn, and members of Medfield's Select Board joined the June 1 groundbreaking.

The site carries its own weight. Medfield State Hospital opened in 1892 as the first Massachusetts facility for chronic mental illness, and its grounds later served as a filming location for "Shutter Island." Mineo has framed the new campus as continuing that story rather than erasing it. "The legacy of healing and innovation that shaped this campus more than a century ago is the same spirit that guides us now," she said.

Her training runs to both sides of the job. Mineo holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Master of Arts in Arts Administration from American University. In 2015 she helped found the Cultural Alliance of Medfield, which now does business as Bellforge. Her aim has stayed simple: "great art shouldn't only happen in big cities."

Dynamo Times recognizes Jean Mineo for building a path from first lesson to professional stage in Medfield, and for rallying a town and a region behind a new home for the arts.