When I was 14, I was invited to a sleepover birthday party. The birthday girl decided we should watch Moulin Rouge!, the Baz Luhrman movie musical from 2001, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. Settled on the floor in our pajamas, we entered a world of campy decadence—Paris in 1899—set to  ...

As Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Virajita Singh put it, “The Minneapolis Institute of Art Impact Report celebrates fostering connections: from the global to the local, the past to the present, across generations and identities. We are the ‘people’s museum’, where everyone is welcome, always.” The 2024 Impact Report offers an overview of how we  ...

We’ve got our favorites, our visitors have theirs—here’s that Venn diagram of unique holiday gifts we can all agree on, at all price points, for all kinds of people, from The Store at Mia. Use it to plan your gifting, or share it with others as your wishlist. Come by on November 29 for Black  ...

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  ...