Back in 2008, a group of staffers at Mia, calling themselves the Green Team, began meeting to discuss potential reforms, ways that the museum could reduce its impact on the environment. It was never going to be easy—preserving the art means regulating the environment. Also, the museum is old. And money, as in any non-profit, is  ...

Back in 2008, a group of staffers at Mia, calling themselves the Green Team, began meeting to discuss potential reforms, ways that the museum could reduce its impact on the environment. It was never going to be easy—preserving the art means regulating the environment. Also, the museum is old. And money, as in any non-profit, is  ...

This week, Mia unveils six newly reinterpreted period rooms as part of its Living Rooms project, a push to invigorate these beloved spaces with fresh perspectives. I was the curator charged with reinstalling Mia’s two English period rooms to consider the domestic life of science circa 250 years ago, the gilded early days of “modern” science—before it became sequestered in laboratories and siloed academic departments. A  ...

A a new study confirms that not only do we perceive the left side of our face as being more attractive, other people do, too.* Australian researchers reviewed 2,000 selfies and found that a majority showed the left side of the face—what researchers have taken to calling “left-side bias.” The presumptive reason? The left side of the face  ...

In the mid-2000s, when the artists Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Phunam Thuc Ha, and Matt Lucero came together in Vietnam, they decided to register as an ad agency—to make art, not ads. It was a workaround. They wanted to shoot a documentary on Vietnam’s first graffiti artists, who were just starting to make their mark on  ...

In the mid-2000s, when the artists Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Phunam Thuc Ha, and Matt Lucero came together in Vietnam, they decided to register as an ad agency—to make art, not ads. It was a workaround. They wanted to shoot a documentary on Vietnam’s first graffiti artists, who were just starting to make their mark on  ...

At Mia, we believe in the “power of art to inspire wonder,” to connect us with something bigger than ourselves. One of the many things that sparked my early fascination with art is how a painting or sculpture could transport me to a different time or place and allow me to see things from another’s  ...

The clouds at Mia are mostly metaphorical—singular forms at the service of the artist rather than any natural phenomena. An array of harmless white puffs, an ominous black mass. It wasn’t until the 19th century that anyone bothered to categorize clouds. Though when a young British meteorologist finally did, in 1803, it was a poet—Göethe—who  ...

Barton Kestle is not dead. He has never been dead. He has no plans to be dead in the near future. At almost 88, he looks terrific: thick mop of white hair, stylish round glasses, all of his own teeth. He does not look like someone who was all but buried in 1954. Oops. Back  ...

On March 19, news broke in the comics community that one of their own had passed, if indeed he had any peers. “As it comes to all of us, the end came for the greatest that ever lived: Bernie Wrightson,” tweeted Guillermo del Toro. Later, he pledged not to tweet for the next 24 hours—a  ...