Blog
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.
The Latest
Let it breathe: The science behind Aaron Dysart’s “Latitude” installation
By Tim Gihring
Aaron Dysart has long admired scientists—the way they see the world, and how they explain it. “I adore science,” says the Minneapolis artist. “Artists and scientists are both trained observers, we just go about it really differently with really different outcomes.” Years ago, Dysart was introduced to John Schade, an ecologist ...
100 years after receiving it, Mia conserves a Late Gothic manuscript
By Alex Bortolot, with contributions from Sherelyn Ogden and Rachel McGarry
In 1921, the collector Herschel V. Jones gave Mia an antiphonary, a manuscript of sung portions of the Christian Mass and the Divine Office, known as antiphons. It was created in 1439 and used by a community of nuns at the Congregation of Fontissalientis ...
Conservation connection: MN couple brings art back to life
Art conservation is essential to Mia’s mission, preserving art and allowing it to be shown. Consider supporting the museum’s conservation work in your year-end giving. Learn more about our Art Champions. By Tim Gihring // Kevin and Leela Scattum were meeting with a couple of curators from Mia when Pujan Gandhi, the museum’s Jane Emison ...
Shifting the perspective: Revisiting history through art
By Alexandra Buffalohead
I am honored to share some insights into the miniature curatorial project I’ve curated in Gallery 261 of Mia’s Americas collection. Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Associate Curator of Native American Art, had invited me to curate a case for an upcoming rotation of objects in the galleries. Jill has worked with other talented artists ...
Mia’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guide
This year, with supply-chain worries shaking up shopping lists, rest assured the Store at Mia is stuffed with inspired, unique gifts for all ages and interests, online and in person. (Mia members save 10 percent by the way, and you can gift memberships as well.) We asked museum staff—among the store’s best customers—for their top picks. Gretchen ...
“Unexpected Turns” unravels the long history of American basketry
By Diane Richard
Basket weaving gets a bad rap. Baskets are “decorative arts and functional objects,” says Nicole LaBouff, associate curator of textiles at Mia. “Because of that, they tend to be overlooked and downplayed as women’s work, or ‘craft.’” The exhibition “Unexpected Turns: Women Artists and the Making of American Basket Weaving Traditions,” ...
How unspeakable tragedy inspired the art of “The Nazi Drawings”
By Tim Gihring
In May 1960, Adolf Eichmann was abducted in Buenos Aires by agents of Mossad, Israel’s secret service. He was interrogated, drugged, and put on a plane to Jerusalem, where he stood trial nearly a year later for orchestrating the deaths of millions of Jews in the Nazis’ so-called Final Solution. The ...
The surprising, creative legacy behind “The Contemporary Print”
By Tim Gihring
When Cole Rogers and Carla McGrath founded the Highpoint Center for Printmaking, in Minneapolis, in 2001, the plan was always to focus on three things: education, community access, and the “pro shop,” where prominent artists could work with Rogers, a master printer, to see their visions roll off the presses and ...
With love: Leslie Barlow’s collaborative portraits
By Keisha Williams
Won’t You Celebrate with Me won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my ...
How Mia’s (re)new(ed) galleries for the Art of Islamic Cultures came together
By Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers
What is “Islamic” about Islamic art? Is there even such a thing as Islamic art? These questions are increasingly debated in the museum world and in academia. But they are not merely academic. Starting on September 23, Mia is opening two new “Islamic art” galleries on the museum’s second floor. One ...