Egypt’s mummies were intended to rest in peace for eternity, slumbering beneath the sand or high up in pyramids. But most were dug up almost immediately. Robbed of their valuables and their serenity. Dragged into darkened British parlors to be unwrapped for entertainment. Burned as train fuel. But they’ve been slow to give up their secrets,  ...

Robert Wilson met Philip Glass, the avant-garde composer, in 1973, after Glass attended a show by Wilson—The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin—that was 12 hours long and almost completely silent. Glass loved it. And the two men, retreating to Wilson’s Manhattan studio after the performance, decided they would meet every week for lunch. Within a few months, as they  ...

Lisa Yankton, a Minneapolis-based poet and member of the Spirit Lake Dakota, was inspired by Mia’s statue of Avalokiteshvara, or Guanyin in Chinese, a Buddhist deity associated with mercy and compassion. It is on display in the Buddhist sculpture court (gallery G200). Avalokitesvara, “One Who Hears the Cries of the World” Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara Guanshiyin Guanyin Goddess of  ...

Wildfires in Los Angeles. Hurricanes and flooding in Houston. Earthquakes in Mexico City. With the frequency of natural disasters seemingly on the rise, planning for them is increasingly important as well. So where does that leave museums, whose mission, in part, is to protect the world’s great treasures? Like other institutions, museums test their emergency plans and have close  ...

In the late 1500s, an ancient pagan Roman sculpture of someone or something lost to memory—a philosopher, perhaps, or a god—was transformed into St. Peter, a more agreeable figure in Catholic Rome. To pull this off, the sculptor added a head, hands, and feet—quite obvious in gilt bronze—and a throne for St. Peter to sit on. For centuries,  ...

Is all the pressure to buy, buy, buy during the winter holidays—early in the morning, late at night, 24/7 on the internet—turning you into the Grinch? Would you rather craft your own gifts than touch the latest plastic gewgaws with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole? Would you rather just send a card? You would’ve made a fine Spug—a  ...

The Store at Mia has been morphing for years now, from something of a postcard and catalogue kiosk into a bonafide boutique, selling the artisanal equivalent of the art on the gallery walls. But the latest redesign pushes the concept of store as living room, object as lifestyle. Gone is the enormous “cash wrap,” or sales counter, that  ...

Among the scenes of royal pageantry and natural disaster in Mia’s colorful look at history painting in the 1700s, “Eyewitness Views: Making History in 18th-Century Europe,” is a wide, detailed view of the Spanish palace at Aranjuez, south of Madrid, in 1756. Red paper lanterns line the gardens and palace walls, and a fleet of pleasure barges  ...

George Morrison was born in 1919 in the now-vanished town of Chippewa City near the Grand Portage Reservation, along Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota. He was Ojibwe in an era before Native Americans could vote or were even granted citizenship in the United States, one of 12 children in an impoverished family. He was isolated from almost everything but his  ...

On October 23, U.S. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson held a meeting with the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani. Two official photos of the session were released the same day, one by Americans, the other by Afghans. At first glance, the photographs appear to capture the same scene; but, if you look more closely, differences  ...