A couple years ago, Mia received 11 paintings from the series known as the Impey Album, a gift from the collection of Elizabeth and Willard Clark. Lady Mary Impey had moved from England to India in 1773, when Britain’s East India Company was cementing control of the Indian subcontinent through bureaucracy  ...

The new exhibition “Freedom Rising: I Am the Story,” now on view at Mia, features more than a dozen quilts made by the Massachusetts artist L’Merchie Frazier, including one depicting the Civil War heroics of Robert Smalls. Born into slavery in South Carolina, Smalls escaped by commandeering the Confederate steamer he  ...

When Robin Wall Kimmerer was being interviewed for college admission, in upstate New York where she grew up, she had a question herself: Why do lavender asters and goldenrod look so beautiful together? Her question was met with the condescending advice that she pursue art school instead. But Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the  ...

Juan Lucero grew up in New Mexico, moving between Albuquerque and his Isleta Pueblo community, just south of town. As a teenager, he began working as a waiter in the restaurant of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, established in Albuquerque by all 19 Pueblos in the state to share their culture: dances, art, food, history.  ...

There’s no question that the holidays will be different this year. While there are many things we will miss this year (hugs from family and friends!), I’ve started to focus on tweaking our traditions and creating some new ones to keep our celebrations joyful and safe.  Spend Time Together, Apart Friendly  ...

I have always been fascinated by language, how we use it not only to communicate but also to express ourselves, to illustrate complex ideas. More than just a function of society, language is an art form all its own, in literature, film, theater, and music. Indeed, it even has a surprisingly  ...

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and leading voice for the human rights of immigrants. He’s also an undocumented immigrant himself, which he revealed in 2011 in a groundbreaking essay for the New York Times Magazine. That same year, he founded Define American, a nonprofit that counters injustice  ...

In the 1620s, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Lievens were both in Leiden, the small town in the southern Netherlands where they had grown up. They were both teenagers, Rembrandt just 15 months older than Lievens. They had apprenticed with the same master painter. They shared models and possibly a studio.  ...

In the early 1900s, the sociologist Lewis Hine taught himself photography and began documenting the thousands of immigrants arriving every day in New York Harbor. Eventually, he turned his camera on the conditions of child workers, sometimes posing as a fire inspector or Bible salesman to get into factories. (This work is  ...

By Diane Richard For years, Mia had a booth in the cavernous Education Building at the Minnesota State Fair, giving away things like cardboard fans, dubbed “Art on a Stick.” With the flick of a wrist, the eye-catching freebies kept fairgoers cool during those sticky hours at the Great Minnesota Get-Together, which of course is  ...