Welcome to MIA Stories. The unveiling. Every week here you’ll find new exclusive behind-the-scenes stories and photos. Stories from Minnesota artists and leaders about the artwork that inspires them. Stories that connect current events to incredible art in the collection. Strange but true stories. Travel stories. Your stories. Why are we doing this? Tell you  ...

I recently came across an astonishing figure: Of the 14,298 food products introduced into supermarkets in 1995, a mere 12 percent were successful. This is where focus groups can help, and they’re now a standard consumer research tool informing everything from political campaigns to corn flakes. Museums benefit from focus groups, too, as they’re an opportunity  ...

“The Cat’s Paw,” which Sir Edwin Henry Landseer’s 1824 painting rather painfully illustrates (on view in gallery G321), was a popular 17th-century fable about a cunning monkey who persuaded a cat to retrieve some chestnuts from a fire. A “cat’s paw” came to mean an easily duped person—a sucker. Now technology has enabled an even  ...

Nothing is sacred anymore. There is no taboo that hasn’t been broken, no religion that hasn’t been ridiculed, no god that hasn’t been deposed. The only thing sacred now, supposedly, is our right to keep nothing sacred. And yet, on a personal level, we know this isn’t true. As explored in the MIA’s new exhibition,  ...

Nothing is sacred anymore. There is no taboo that hasn’t been broken, no religion that hasn’t been ridiculed, no god that hasn’t been deposed. The only thing sacred now, supposedly, is our right to keep nothing sacred. And yet, on a personal level, we know this isn’t true. As explored in the MIA’s new exhibition,  ...

1) Adieu to the unfriendly Frenchman? The gruff Gallic waiter and the petty Parisian hotelier loom as large in the tourist imagination as the Eiffel Tower. Who cares if they’re as unreal as Tintin? The Paris tourism board, that’s who. It’s distributed tens of thousands of brochures called “Do You Speak Touriste?” to cafes, hotels,  ...

WHEN ASKED IF I would write about a work of art at the MIA that inspires me, I immediately said, “Yes.” But as I began to reflect, I recalled the utter frustration years ago of having to identify only ten pieces of music I would want if stranded on a deserted island. Impossible! As I  ...

I must admit I love oil paintings. I love the lush surface and the flexibility that oil paint gives an artist to create illusions. I also have to confess that Edgar Degas is probably my favorite artist in the world. You can stand in front of this painting and say to yourself, “O.K., I’m ready  ...

IN A ROOMFUL of modern masterpieces, Georgia O’Keeffe’s City Night stands out as particularly inspirational to me. As a female artist making her mark within the predominantly male art world of New York in the 1920s, O’Keeffe cut through the stereotypes of “women’s art” to create powerful portraits of the city that stood at the  ...

IN A ROOMFUL of modern masterpieces, Georgia O’Keeffe’s City Night stands out as particularly inspirational to me. As a female artist making her mark within the predominantly male art world of New York in the 1920s, O’Keeffe cut through the stereotypes of “women’s art” to create powerful portraits of the city that stood at the  ...