Hózhǫ́ is a foundational concept in the Navajo world, encompassing ideas of beauty, harmony, balance, order, grace, health, and happiness. It is a state of being, thinking, and acting. Navajo artists embody hózhǫ́ as they weave, and textiles are imbued with and become works of hózhǫ́. During Native American Heritage Month, Mia is displaying a Navajo twilled saddle blanket  ...

The Moulin Rouge opened in Paris on October 6, 1889—the same year as the Eiffel Tower and the same day that Thomas Edison debuted the first motion picture (Monkeyshines). Things were changing, and quickly, in fin-de-siecle Paris, a great lurch forward that was as unsettling as it was exciting. The Moulin  ...

Esther Parada’s trip to Bolivia in the 1960s as a Peace Corps volunteer marked the beginning of her artistic career as a photographer. While teaching art at the university in Sucre, she captured the expressive faces, richly patterned textiles, and harsh light of the altiplano as a way to retain and memorize the experience of  ...

As part of the ceremonies leading up to the opening of the Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection on September 14, 2024, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) will host several Buddhist nuns from the Jangchub Choeling Nunnery in India. During their visit, the nuns will create a  ...

In her chic apartment on New York’s Upper East Side, Alice Kandell likes to retreat to a room where flickering candles softly illuminate gilded sculptures inlaid with coral, turquoise, and other semiprecious stones. The walls are hung with exquisitely painted images of serene deities and ferocious guardians. A fine silk canopy floats above an altar  ...

On the first Wednesday morning of every month, an unlikely group of visitors gets to experience Mia’s collection up close. Some of these visitors can’t talk, walk, or even see very well, but they enjoy the art as much as anyone. And they will recall these mornings in various important ways,  ...

In June 1886, Santiago Rusiñol is on his honeymoon in Paris. He’s 25 years old, Spanish from Barcelona, and in love. In a letter to a friend, he writes that he has never felt so stimulated, so alive and full of pleasure. But he is not referring to his wife, or  ...

The dog days of summer are upon us, officially the twenty days before and after the Dog Star, otherwise known as Sirius, rises and falls with the sun. Unofficially, of course, it’s that hot, humid time in Minnesota when all you want to do is laze around and hope someone else  ...

The 2024 Summer Olympics opens in Paris on July 26 with thirty-two sports, including some newish events like surfing, skateboarding, and breaking (aka breakdancing). The Games evolve. When Paris hosted in 1900, poodle clipping was a trial event (of course)—groom the most poodles in two hours. (It didn’t catch on, c’est  ...