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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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A Mother's Day tribute from "The Habsburgs": The story of Maria Theresa, Europe's mother-in-law
She was a “lean in” kind of woman. Mother of 16 children and ruler of most of Europe. And if she didn’t exactly have to fight for everything she got, Maria Theresa did have to fight to keep it. A portrait of Maria Theresa as a 10-year-old girl, in 1727, hangs in “The Habsburgs: Rarely Seen Masterpieces from Europe’s ...
A Mother’s Day tribute from “The Habsburgs”: The story of Maria Theresa, Europe’s mother-in-law
She was a “lean in” kind of woman. Mother of 16 children and ruler of most of Europe. And if she didn’t exactly have to fight for everything she got, Maria Theresa did have to fight to keep it. A portrait of Maria Theresa as a 10-year-old girl, in 1727, hangs in “The Habsburgs: Rarely Seen Masterpieces from Europe’s ...
Once at MIA: Wrestling with Depression
“In troubled times such as these,” the MIA lamented in 1931, “there is a tendency to discard, as unnecessary luxuries, many things which seem essential to life in prosperous days. Interest in books and music and art is packed away with the party dress.” The Great Depression was on, though it wasn’t clear how long ...
The lions in springtime: A floral tribute to Ella Pillsbury Crosby is an Art in Bloom surprise
The lions guarding the front steps of the MIA have never moved. Never flinched. Never roared. But this week, they bloomed. The duo sprouted floral manes, courtesy of Art and Flowers Design Studio, as the MIA’s latest birthday year surprise. Giant poms of dianthus—some 200 blooms in each ball—loop through the lions’ paws, counterweights to ...
Once at MIA: The tiny boxer
They could have been playing stickball. Or whittling. Or pushing a hoop around with a branch. Or whatever kids did for fun in the 1920s. But no, they were at the Minneapolis School of Art at the crack of dawn drawing a mini pugilist, dwarfed by the platform he’s perched on yet ready to punch ...
Once at MIA: A master works
You can bifurcate American ceramics, like time itself, into two very different halves: before and after Warren Mackenzie. Because a half century ago he turned the medium into art, despite his protests ever since that he’s done nothing of the sort. From his Stillwater studio he would turn out 50 to 200 pots a day. ...
Once at MIA: Amazed by modern art
Let’s assume this was staged. The flood lighting, the dramatic expression—it’s as though the girl had seen a ghost, not a Picasso. The Minneapolis Times-Tribune photographer shooting Harriet Johnson and Donald Knox at the MIA in 1941 had probably asked for a reaction, and got one. But even museums struggled with modern art. “Whether we ...
Beautiful birthday: Exclusive designs in the Store at MIA celebrate a century of good taste
When the MIA opened, in 1915, James J. Hill used his time at the podium to admonish the museum not to “pitch the key too low”—to keep a high aesthetic standard. Arguably it has. And recently that bar has extended to the redesigned Store at MIA, reflecting the virtuosity in the galleries with some of ...
Tears and treasure: How "The Habsburgs" came together in Vienna
I cried during my first visit to Vienna, in 1988. It happened in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where there are many moving and impactful paintings by artists such as Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, and Caravaggio. It was the Breughel gallery that caused me to weep. It’s a large room, empty save for the walls, which ...
Tears and treasure: How “The Habsburgs” came together in Vienna
I cried during my first visit to Vienna, in 1988. It happened in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where there are many moving and impactful paintings by artists such as Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, and Caravaggio. It was the Breughel gallery that caused me to weep. It’s a large room, empty save for the walls, which ...