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An antique gray and gold television with rounded corners and a red speaker.

Engineered for Domestic Bliss

Make the most of Minnesota’s short growing season with lush floral designs plucked from Mia’s permanent collection, all on view for the first time. In this virtual pleasure garden, tulips, daffodils, and morning glories mingle with the noble rose, whatever the weather may bring. Standouts include an embroidered Portuguese bedcover, a painted Chinese palampore, and a hot-pink priest’s mantle—all created in the 1700s. Women designers get special attention, with works by Anna Maria Garthwaite (1688–1763), Marjatta Metsovaara (1927–2014), and Helena Hernmarck (b. 1941).

Handprinted on a satin scarf are floral bouquets and trees with flowers stemming from them.

2022.9

A Perennial Pleasure Garden: Botanical Textiles from Mia’s Permanent Collection

Tamara and Michael Root have created one of the largest, most diverse collections in the Twin Cities of studio ceramics from the 20th and 21st centuries. For nearly 35 years, they have followed the Minnesota ceramic arts scene and collected nationally and internationally, assisted by knowledgeable dealers. Now retired professors, they truly lived with these works, showing a large selection in museum-worthy displays in their South Minneapolis home.
For more than 10 years, the Roots have donated singular works to Mia and provided generous funds for new ceramic acquisitions. They are now moving forward with the collection as a promised gift to Mia. Two complementary exhibitions celebrate their generosity while showcasing the Roots as thoughtful collectors of Japanese as well as North American and European ceramics.
This exhibition, in the Japanese galleries, presents a selection of tea bowls and other tea ware, standing and hanging vases, as well as sculpture. The Roots did not venture into Japanese ceramics until 2001, when they acquired the first of almost 50 tea bowls. The collection eventually encompassed 168 works, dominated by functional ware. While their focus remained strongly on contemporary works, the Roots also added a number from the mid-20th century, including pieces by the Mingei (folk-craft) artists Hamada Shōji, Kitaōji Rosanjin, and Arakawa Toyozō.
The related exhibition &#8220;The Root Collection: Celebrating Studio Ceramics&#8221; is on view in the Cargill Gallery, on the first floor, from August 19, 2023 to January 28, 2024.

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The Root Collection: Living with Japanese Ceramics

Mia began collecting art from Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1940s, particularly ceramics, objects in gold, and textiles produced by the ancient civilizations of Central and South America. The collection has grown ever since, largely through generous donations and purchases of work by contemporary artists. The selection of art in this gallery honors these efforts of previous generations to assemble some remarkable artworks, a foundation on which the museum will build a more inclusive collection, representing the full diversity and creativity of Latin American artists.

This is a colorful and bright artpiece of people dancing and playing music. All shades and ages come together to enjoy the music that's being created.

Latin American Art at Mia

Acts of care can unfold in surprising ways, in surprising places. At work, where colleagues care for their collaborations. At bars, where strangers care for an impromptu community. At home, where artists may care for children and the muse in joyful, if precarious, balance. This exhibition of photography, paintings, and other media suggests the many networks of care all around us, all the time, forming and reforming around shared labor, shared histories, personal relationships, and yearning.

In a dim room, two women are comforting a woman who looks distressed. While another woman is looking outside whilst standing in between the threshold.

2022.82

Networks of Care

In the summer of 1942, during a yearlong fellowship in Washington, D.C., Gordon Parks photographed government worker Ella Watson across the varied landscape of her daily life. The resulting picture story presents Watson—a custodian, the head of a household, a deaconess at her church—as a vital figure within the civic sphere. At the same time, this intimate series reveals Parks’s experiences in coming to terms with the segregated city he once embraced as “the seat of democracy.”
This exhibition brings together nearly sixty photographs from their partnership and draws its title from one of the most celebrated photographs of the 20th century—an iconic portrait of Watson that Parks later titled “American Gothic.” Most importantly, it proposes new grounds for understanding Parks as an artist and activist, highlighting a unique professional collaboration between two Black federal employees at a crucial juncture in United States history.
Organized by Mia and the Gordon Parks Foundation.
Lead Sponsor: Kerry and Sky Fauver

Use this guide to facilitate conversations in your classroom before a museum tour or between chaperones and students on self-guided visits.
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This is a black and white photo of a person holding a broom and mop in each hand. Behind the person is the American flag.

American Gothic: Gordon Parks and Ella Watson

Many Dutch artists of the 1600s left their studios to wander the world around them. They roamed their local streets, passed through the city gates, and walked down to the sea or out into the countryside. They saw laborers and animals, ships and dwellings, festivals and fellow travelers. They took their sketchbooks with them to record what they saw, and the etchings inspired by these drawings created a boom in armchair tourism—an experience akin to watching travel and nature on television today. Some artists kept right on walking, arriving in distant lands such as Italy or Norway. Their work invites us to slow down, join in their journeys, and contemplate our own.

This is a etched image of a chapel in front of a pond. There are large and dense trees surrounding the chapel.

Wandering With Dutch Artists

From the dragon’s first appearance in art some eight to nine thousand years ago, during the early Neolithic period, these ferocious beasts have occupied an honored place in Chinese culture. Their majestic power has inspired art in nearly every medium—jade to bronze, ceramics to paintings. Originating in mythology as scaly water beasts who controlled the rain and wind, they have evolved in form and symbolism, taking to the skies to become the auspicious creatures we know today: four-legged, horned, snakelike beings who breathe clouds (not fire) and represent not only heavenly power and prosperity but Chinese culture itself.
To celebrate the Year of the Dragon in the lunar calendar, this exhibition features objects from Mia’s own Chinese art collection that represent the evolution of dragon imagery and symbolism, from the ancient world to today.

These are gilt bronze emblems of flying dragons. The two dragons are displayed on black placeholders.

200.87.2.1; 20087.2.2

Year of the Dragon: Mystical Creatures of the Sky

What happens when Native American and American art is seen together, rather than in separate places? Might we look at these artworks in a new way? What stories and connections emerge from this new way of being together? 
These are some of the questions that guided a collaboratively reimagined suite of galleries. This Indigenous-led, consensus-based curatorial experiment is based on Dakota philosophies and ways of being. It includes thematic installations that center “place”, honor the living land, explore the power of relationality &#8212; the idea that we are all connected and build relationships based on this awareness – and ends with a reflection, inviting visitors to join us in imagining the future we wish to have. What does it look and feel like? How do we build it together?
“Relationality” is at the heart of our curatorial practice—every aspect of this collaboration was shaped by being together, listening, honoring lived knowledge, and respecting points of view. Mia curators worked with Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe; artist), Jordan Poorman Cocker (Gáuigú (Kiowa) Nation; curator), Bridget R. Cooks (curator and professor, University of California in Irvine), Dakota Hoska (Oglála Lakȟóta, Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee; Denver Art Museum curator), and Darlene St. Clair (Mdewakaƞtuƞwaƞ Dakota, Lower Sioux; professor, St. Cloud State University). We thank Gwen Westerman (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate; poet, artist, professor, Mankato State University) for reading two of her poems and Šišóka Dúta (Bdé Hdakíŋyaŋ Oyáŋke, Dakota language educator and translator) for bringing the Dakota language into the galleries. We also thank Nicole MartinRogers (White Earth Ojibwe Nation descendant, independent consultant, Indigenous evaluator) for working with community members in focus groups to help shape our final themes. 
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On the left, this is a painting of a person dressed in all white. There are laying in a field of colorful and blooming flowers. On the right is a painting of all indigenous plants and creatures.

Reimagining Native/American Art

This exhibition features the first generation of artists of Korean descent to experience the new freedoms and rapid changes ushered in by democracy. Born between 1960 and 1986, they came of age in a time of transition, their work filtered through the collective memory of authoritarian rule in South Korea. Here, they reflect on social and political tensions, economic and cultural shifts. In often monumental works, they bring viewers to the border with North Korea, illuminate the ironies of globalization, and suggest what has been gained and lost in South Korea’s ascendance.
Organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this is the first major showing of Korean contemporary art in the United States since 2009. Many of the artists are well known in South Korea or have an international following; others may be less familiar, especially in American museums. They mold the medium to their message, whether photography or painting, ceramics or video. They honor some traditions and resist others. They bend time and place, addressing the past, present and future to make sense of their complex experiences.
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Hear from artists, curators, and exhibition organizers as they guide you through the exhibition and discuss the context and themes surrounding the artworks. Bring your own device and headphones to listen along in the galleries.
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Use this guide to facilitate conversations in your classroom before a museum tour or between chaperones and students on self-guided visits.
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Free Public Tours 
Public tours take place at 2 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, and 7 p.m. on Thursday. An exhibition ticket is required. No public or private tours are offered on Member Days and during Art in Bloom. The last public tour is on June 16.
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Free Virtual Tours 
Virtual tours take place on April 7 at 2 PM, May 8 at 2 PM, and June 6 at 7 PM. An exhibition ticket is not necessary. Registration is required.
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This is a professional headshot of a person with short hair posing towards the camera. They have bright pink and yellow nails.

The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989

This exhibition examines the closely related techniques of collage, assemblage, photomontage, and found object sculpture. The diverse selection of artworks, drawn from Mia&#8217;s collection and local private collections, are by leading national and international artists and showcase the recent resurgence of interest over the past several decades in these art forms. The exhibition highlights both formal and conceptual experimentation and demonstrates how these interrelated techniques are particularly suited to exploring social, political, cultural themes and content.

This is a collage piece on a board of wood. There are hand-drawn cowboys with pieces of floral paper.

2020.96.7

Collage/Assemblage Part II: 1990-Now

The idea of retreating from society into mountainous landscapes has a long history in China. Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian followers all regarded mountains as sacred places where one could become spiritually fulfilled, far from restraining social burdens.
This exhibition features classical Chinese paintings from Mia’s permanent collection that express the idyllic life of mountain dwellers, from recluses in their mountain huts to scenic lakes with fishermen who represent a life of freedom and spontaneity. Many paintings depict cascading waterfalls, a reference to the Confucianist and Daoist analogy for facing life’s troubles: to gaze into a waterfall is to gaze into one’s mind.

Dwelling in Mountains: Reclusion in Chinese Landscape Painting

Tanaka Ryōhei (1933–2019) was a prolific Japanese printmaker who specialized in etchings. Born and raised in Takatsuki, he grew up surrounded by the rural landscapes of western Japan, which would become the subject of his prints. This exhibition features prints by Tanaka given to Mia from the extensive collection of Sue Y. S. Kimm and Seymour Grufferman.
Tanaka began etching in his thirties after meeting Furuno Yoshio (1909–1978), the founder of the Kyoto Etchers Association. At the time, etching was far less common than woodblock-printing, the primary mode of printing in Japan for centuries. Tanaka learned the basics of etching from Furuno, soon developed his own methods through experimentation, and continued to make and print his own etchings until 2013.
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2019.78.325

Tanaka Ryōhei: Portrait of a Home

Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617) rose to become the hero of Dutch art in the late 1500s. He started his career as an engraver of copper printing plates, developing his skills to mind-boggling perfection, whether working in fine detail or with bravura gesture. Sometimes he engraved his own inventions; sometimes he worked from other artists’ drawings. He also had a remarkable aptitude for inventing new compositions in the style of other artists. Goltzius’s skill is yet more remarkable considering a serious childhood accident left him unable to open his dominant right hand. This exhibition looks at Goltzius’s mature printmaking and the circle of artists around him who came to rival his talent.

This is an engraved art piece of a figure dressed in prestigious clothing while holding a flag in their hand.

2023.32

Goltzius &amp; Co.

This exhibition showcases a selection of watercolors, drawings, and original prints recently added to Mia’s permanent collection. Ranging in date from 1975 to 2023, all are the work of women artists—some celebrated, others less widely known. Collectively, the selection reflects the museum’s ongoing efforts to reexamine and reset its collecting strategies to better reflect the remarkable diversity of artistic achievement in the United States and elsewhere. By championing the work of artists underrepresented in its collections, Mia strengthens its commitment to enriching the community by collecting, preserving, and displaying outstanding works of art.

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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

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Featured Events

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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

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Ongoing Exhibitions

Engineered for Domestic Bliss

A Perennial Pleasure Garden: Botanical Textiles from Mia’s Permanent Collection

The Root Collection: Living with Japanese Ceramics