I was 23 before I fully embraced my identity as a Korean American woman. Until then, I had never truly considered my ethnicity or race to be something central to my identity. This denial was founded in the micro-aggressions I faced from an early age: classmates asking “where my real parents  ...

[Editor’s note: While “Hmong” remains the predominant spelling of the cultural group’s Anglicized name, “HMong” is increasingly used to be inclusive of both Hmoob Dawb (White Hmong) and Moob Leeg (Green/Blue Mong).] April is National Hmong Heritage Month, and to mark the occasion Mia is displaying two Paj Ntaub, or Flower  ...

At any given time, a small percentage of Mia’s permanent collection is scattered around the world. A single work here, a few works there. On loan to museums, universities, and other institutions for exhibitions large and small. The Death of Germanicus, by Nicolas Poussin, has been a frequent traveler. Modigliani’s Head  ...

As Mia’s new special exhibition, “The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989,” makes clear, the global spread of South Korean pop culture is as intentional as it is relentless. From Gangnam Style to Squid Game to the sudden spike in kimchi consumption, the push to export K-everything has been a  ...

The year 1989 is remembered for many things, like the birth of both the World Wide Web and Taylor Swift, though perhaps primarily for the protests in support of democracy that were by turns successful (the fall of the Berlin Wall) and unsuccessful (the uprising in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square). Often overlooked  ...

Sokari Douglas Camp, born in Nigeria, moved to Great Britain as a child and trained as an artist in Oakland, California, and London. This dual identity, split between Africa and England, has informed her art. Often, she honors traditional African art forms, though in working with welded steel—a traditionally “male” medium—she is crossing gender boundaries  ...

The Year of the Dragon, in the Chinese zodiac, began on February 10—the same day that Mia opened “Year of the Dragon: Mystical Creatures of the Sky.” In sculpture, paintings, robes, and other objects, the exhibition traces the evolution of Chinese dragons over thousands of years, from a kind of folkloric  ...

Sanford Biggers’ Semaphore sculpture is now on view in Mia’s first-floor lobby. Made in 2019 and acquired by Mia the following year, the installation is part of the museum’s Black History Month celebration honoring the work of artists who interpret Black American stories through creative expression. Biggers, a Los Angeles native who has lived and  ...

Lisa Bergh, whose colorful, abstract sculptures and assemblages are now on view at Mia (“Topography”) as part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, never intended to be a rural artist. But for close to 20 years, she has made a life, and a living, as a working artist and arts advocate  ...

The last time Robin Hickman-Winfield saw Gordon Parks was in 2006, shortly before his death at 93. They were in New York, in the elegant apartment that Parks bought in 1971 after directing his second film, Shaft. Parks made dinner, as he liked to do. Played the piano. Yet something was  ...