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Fresh perspectives on art, life, and current events. From deep dives to quick takes to insightful interviews, it’s the museum in conversation. Beyond the walls. Outside the frame. Around the world.
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NewsFlash: Should Damien Hirst have copied an Ife head?
Damien Hirst’s popular show at this year’s Venice Biennale, “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable,” is an underwater fantasy about objects found after a fictional shipwreck. It’s his first exhibition of new work in 10 years. Some critics had begun to wonder if he’d run out of ideas. The answer might depend on your worldview. One of the sculptures ...
Social science: How to recreate an Enlightenment-era "science party"
About two years ago, I was conducting research at the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis when Mia curator Nicole LaBouff approached me with a question about solar microscopes. She was planning an exhibition called “Science and Sociability in 1700s England,” now open in the Queen Anne and Georgian period rooms at Mia. The Georgian Drawing Room is arranged as though for a “scientific ...
Social science: How to recreate an Enlightenment-era “science party”
About two years ago, I was conducting research at the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis when Mia curator Nicole LaBouff approached me with a question about solar microscopes. She was planning an exhibition called “Science and Sociability in 1700s England,” now open in the Queen Anne and Georgian period rooms at Mia. The Georgian Drawing Room is arranged as though for a “scientific ...
A comics expert explains the secret pleasures of Mia's Guillermo del Toro show
Somehow, over the years, Rurik Hover wound up with 85 boxes of comic books. Now he’s starting to sell—”culling out the crap,” as he puts it. And not just his comics but other people’s, too. He’s gone from a fan to a collector to a dealer, a cycle that has made him something of an expert ...
A comics expert explains the secret pleasures of Mia’s Guillermo del Toro show
Somehow, over the years, Rurik Hover wound up with 85 boxes of comic books. Now he’s starting to sell—”culling out the crap,” as he puts it. And not just his comics but other people’s, too. He’s gone from a fan to a collector to a dealer, a cycle that has made him something of an expert ...
Why immigrants value art: Stories from Mia’s "Global Movements" artists
On May 11, Mia opens Global Movements, a four-day series of programs on immigration, migration, and the arts. Among the presenters are several Twin Cities artists, and we asked them how art has been important in their lives and work. Here are some of their responses. Cy Thao A Hmong painter and former state legislator whose epic 50-painting series The Hmong Migration ...
Why immigrants value art: Stories from Mia’s “Global Movements” artists
On May 11, Mia opens Global Movements, a four-day series of programs on immigration, migration, and the arts. Among the presenters are several Twin Cities artists, and we asked them how art has been important in their lives and work. Here are some of their responses. Cy Thao A Hmong painter and former state legislator whose epic 50-painting series The Hmong Migration ...
Can algae save us? Why Mia is getting personal with pond scum
In this land of ice and snow, summer is something magical. Almost in the blink of an eye, the world becomes lush and green and you can finally feel your toes! As the snow retreats, 10,000 lakes suddenly appear, offering respite from the humidity of the summer heat. But warmer weather brings another, less pleasant transformation: ...
Art Inspires: Stephanie Wilbur Ash on tornados and other ways to leave home
They say we do not have them in Norway, but several times I saw them over the sea, and once I saw one skip across the lane like a silly little girl. The colors are different in Norway—more gray and green over the water, more blurry white on land—but they exist. Those who say they do ...
Art Inspires: Lesley Nneka Arimah on the doll inside the altar
The Doll At first I thought, with some worry, that I was to be given to the child. The girl watched with impatience as I was formed, appendages of bamboo wrapped in cloth until I resembled a crude doll of a man. We, myself and the girl, discovered at the same time that I was ...