Exhibitions

<h1 style="font-size: 2.75rem;">Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection</h1>
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“Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection” includes more than two hundred gilt-bronze sculptures, paintings, silk hangings, and carpets that were created in Tibet between the 1300s and early 1900s. 
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On view

Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695) taught children how to live in a dictatorship. His Fables depict a world of talking animals, but the lessons they teach are about power&#8217;s abuses and the skills needed to survive. From their first publication in 1668 during the absolutist reign of King Louis XIV, Fables captivated artists, who illustrated scenes from the tales on a variety of surfaces. This exhibition presents textiles and ceramics that were inspired by La Fontaine and circulated in the elite domestic spaces of privileged children and their caregivers. These items vividly bring to life scenes from famous stories such as the tortoise and the hare, the kite and the nightingale, and the rooster and the pearl.

Textile image of a brown bird gripping a branch, with a pillar and flowers in the background

Survival of the Fittest: Lessons from La Fontaine in Textile and Porcelain

In 1897, the French painter Claude Monet made four paintings of the chrysanthemums in his garden in Giverny, capturing them not in a vase but en plein air—painting the flowers as they grew. He had been an avid collector of Japanese prints since the 1870s, and his unexpected, expressive use of space in this experiment recalls the Large Flowers series of prints made between 1833 and 1834 by Katsushika Hokusai. This exhibition brings the Large Flowers and Chrysanthemums series into conversation, exploring the symbiotic artistic connections between Japan and France in the nineteenth century.

74.1.210 Hokusai | Monet

This exhibition is the first to present South African photographer Ernest Cole’s images of Black lives in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Created during a consequential period in American history, these photographs were rarely released during Cole’s lifetime and were believed to have been lost until they resurfaced in 2017. Brought together for the first time in this exhibition, the pictures reflect both a new-found hope and freedom that Cole felt in America, as well as an incisive eye for inequality and systemic racism in the United States. Seen through the eyes of a man who fled the apartheid regime in South Africa, this trove of images provides a revealing window into late 20th century American society.
Organized by Aperture. Curated by Leslie M. Wilson, PhD.
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This exhibition is made possible, in part, with generous support from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Related Events

Black-and-white photograph of a group of people, mostly white and one Black woman and young Black girl, standing behind a barricade

Ernest Cole. Midtown Manhattan.

The True America: Photographs by Ernest Cole

Not all of the artistry at Mia comes from outside the museum—many employees are artists as well, and this exhibition spotlights their work.
The Staff Art Show was organized and curated by Team Mia, a group of museum staff devoted to cultivating a positive work environment, encouraging generosity and relationship-building among staff, providing accessible opportunities for connection and growth, and recognizing and celebrating museum employees. We are pleased to showcase the immense talent among us.

Colorful scene of mountains in blue, green, teal, purple, and orange with a bright pink sky

Artists at Work: The Mia Staff Art Show

In the final years of the 1400s, printed representations of European cities began to appear more frequently. Some of the images seemingly place the viewer on a hill, looking across the countryside to the city. Others offer a bird’s-eye view. Mia is fortunate to own some of the great landmarks in the development of these trends, such as The Nuremburg Chronicle (1493), which illustrates dozens of cities, and Jacopo de Barbari’s View of Venice (1500), which shows the island city on an imposing scale and in minute detail. As the ancestors of Google Earth and other mapping apps, they offer an aesthetic and civic experience lacking in their electronic counterparts.

City Views

Yōzō Hamaguchi (1909–2000) was a master of color mezzotints, a technique that allowed printmakers to reproduce complex details of an artwork. Photography had rendered it obsolete by the 1900s, but Hamaguchi revived the technique after encountering it during a stay in Paris in the 1930s. There, he met American poet e.e. cummings, who gifted him a tool to achieve the signature tones in mezzotint. In the 1980s, Hamaguchi paid homage to the poet with the “e.e. cummings suite” of prints titled with lines from the poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town.”
This exhibition explores how Hamaguchi transformed the ordinary into the uncanny, featuring prints generously donated by Charles and Robyn Citrin and Bill and Roberta Stein.

And more by more they dream their sleep: Mezzotints by Yōzō Hamaguchi

Collectors Fay Gallus and Richard Sweet recently gave Mia an exceptional group of photographs: works by Eugene Atget, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Walker Evans, Irving Penn, Alec Soth, Weegee, and other celebrated photographers of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. This show honors the generosity of these collectors in supporting Mia’s mission of collecting, preserving, and making accessible outstanding works of art. At the same time, it underscores the strength of Mia’s photography collection, which continues to grow from important donations like this one, enriching the communities the museum serves.

A Generous Outlook: Gifts from Fay Gallus and Richard Sweet

The night before Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, the demon king Narakasura is burned in effigy. In this exhibition, Roshan Ganu uses immersive videos and paintings to explore the mythology and contemporary celebration around this ritual and her own fascination with the night.
Ganu is a multimedia narrative artist who seeks to recontextualize history, culture, and biography into dynamic and immersive experiences. She received the Jerome Early Career Award in 2022 and was recently in residence as part of the Out of the Circle group in Cairo, Egypt. She has exhibited widely across the region, including exhibitions at the Franconia Sculpture Park, Rochester Art Center, and Soo Visual Arts Center. She received her MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2020.
This exhibition is part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program.
Support provided by RBC Wealth Management.

An image from Roshan Ganu's show of images projected onto the walls and ceiling

Roshan Ganu: रातराणी: The Night Blooming Jasmine

Otto Dix (1891–1969) served in the German army during World War I. For three years, he led a machine-gun unit and experienced the horror of trench warfare firsthand. When the war ended, in 1918, many of Dix’s countrymen wanted to celebrate the valor of military service and rebuild German power; others wanted to forget and move forward. Dix belonged to a smaller cohort who wanted to scrutinize how a war that raged for four years and left ten million dead could happen in the first place. In the early 1920s, Dix created a series of fifty raw etchings—published as Der Krieg (The War)—that are less an account of Dix’s wartime activity than a sequence of PTSD-induced flashbacks.
Content advisory: This exhibition contains images of suffering, death, and bodily decay.

Black and white etching by Otto Dix of soldiers in gas masks during Word War I.

Otto Dix: The War Portfolio

The narrative painting genre has been popular in Chinese art since the Han dynasty nearly two thousand years ago. The subjects of these paintings vary widely, from mythology and classic literature to history and political satire. For centuries, the most popular subjects were transcendent scenes evoking Buddhist and Taoist doctrines. Over time, many artists shifted their focus to the more mundane world—scenes of scholar-officials and ordinary people going about their lives. This gallery features paintings from Mia’s permanent collection that showcase how Chinese artists have used narrative painting to illustrate tales from both the divine and mortal realms.

From the Divine to the Mortal: Storytelling in Chinese Painting

One of the leading peintres-graveurs, or painter-printmakers, of late nineteenth-century Paris, Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) applied her painterly skill to a variety of print techniques. Balancing color, line, and texture, she breathed life into intimate scenes of domestic labor and leisure. &#8220;Cassatt on Paper&#8221; presents highlights from Mia’s collection of prints by Cassatt, offering a rare view into the life and art of this important woman artist.

Cassatt on Paper

Living on an archipelago, surrounded by water on all sides, the Japanese have always had a close relationship with the sea. The marine life depicted in Japanese art, however, is often more symbolic than real, meant to convey literary, visual, or seasonal associations. Sometimes, even the connections to the sea are abstract, such as geometric patterns meant to evoke fishnets or scales on dishes and clothing. This exhibition explores the sea creatures that permeate Japanese art and culture, and dives into their deeper meaning.
<h2>Name That Fish</h2>
You’re invited to help name a sculpture featured in the exhibition. Between October 10 and 31, 2024, Mia is hosting a naming content for Imai Sadamasa&#8217;s fish sculpture (pictured above).
You can click the button below to submit your entry, or participate via Instagram and Facebook or in person at Mia using a QR code.
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The artist will personally choose the winning name, which we’ll announce on social media. The lucky winner will receive a custom plush replica of the sculpture. In-person participants can claim a unique enamel pin featuring Sadamasa’s fish.

L2024.29.1

Catch of the Day: Humans and Marine Animals in Japan

An aristocratic transplant to the bohemian haunts of Paris, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec captured the nightclubs and cabarets of Montmartre in the 1880s and ’90s, setting to canvas and paper their glittering lights and dazzling entertainments. Among his favorite spots were Le Chat Noir, Le Mirliton, and, above all others, the Moulin Rouge. One of his most remarkable paintings, At the Moulin Rouge, captures a night at the legendary nightclub with a band of regulars, including several of its most famous performers and Toulouse-Lautrec himself.
On loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, At the Moulin Rouge is at the center of this exhibition about Toulouse-Lautrec, his circle of fellow artists, and how they depicted the transformation of Parisian nightlife at the turn of the century. The exhibition features a dozen rarely seen works from Mia’s collection, including French posters and drawings from the era.
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Upcoming Events

Image of At the Moulin Rouge, a painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

At the Moulin Rouge

&#8220;Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection&#8221; includes more than two hundred gilt-bronze sculptures, paintings, silk hangings, and carpets that were created in Tibet between the 1300s and early 1900s. Buddhist ritual objects are displayed in the context of an elaborate private household shrine, a space used for offerings, devotional prayer, rituals, and contemplation. With its flickering candlelight, sonorous chanting, and the subtle smell of incense, the glittering room provides an oasis for peaceful contemplation within the galleries at Mia.
Tour a selection of objects in this guide. 
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Prepare your students for a visit with this guide. 
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Step Inside the Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room &#8211; 3D Virtual Tour 
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L2023.76.198

Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection

This gallery invites visitors to experience the Age of Enlightenment anew, showing works produced and circulated between 1775 and 1815—an era of disruption across intellectual, philosophical, and political frontiers. Art served various purposes in this period: as an indicator of colonial might, a means to communicate a principled stance against slavery, and an avenue through which to publicly revere great thinkers. The artworks assembled evoke the monumental ambitions that marked the time.

Painting of a battle scene with the main focus being a knight with his arm raised on a white horse charging into battle

Revolutions, Republics, and Restoration

The exuberant 20-century ceramic artist Clarice Cliff famously said, in response to critics, “Having a little fun at my work does not make me any less of an artist, and people who appreciate truly beautiful and original creations in pottery are not frightened by innocent tomfoolery.&#8221;
Drawing from the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, along with promised gifts from the Tamara and Michael Root collection of studio ceramics, this exhibition at the Wells Fargo Center in downtown Minneapolis showcases the delights and talents of women in the fields of modern and contemporary industrial design and craft. The exhibition features examples of design from Cliff as well as British silver designer Kate Harris, American inventor Marion Weeber, and prolific designer Eva Zeisel. Studio ceramics include works from important American ceramic educator Laura Andreson, Finnish contemporary artist Kirsi Kivivirta, and clay sculptor Karen Karnes, among others. The exhibition is on view in twenty cases in the ground-floor concourse and skyway levels of the Wells Fargo Center in downtown Minneapolis.
Wells Fargo Center Hours: Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. &#8211; 5 p.m. 
Generous support provided by:  <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-69398" src="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01101447/LOGO-std_blk1web.png" alt="" width="85" height="85" srcset="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01101447/LOGO-std_blk1web.png 85w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01101447/LOGO-std_blk1web.png 32w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01101447/LOGO-std_blk1web.png 50w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/01101447/LOGO-std_blk1web.png 64w" sizes="(max-width: 85px) 100vw, 85px" />

A Little Fun at My Work: Women in Design and Craft

Art from Latin America and the Caribbean has been collected by Mia since the 1940s, particularly in the form of ceramics, objects in gold, and textiles produced by artmakers of the ancient civilizations that populated Central and South America. The collection has significantly increased over the years largely because of donations and purchases of works by historical and contemporary artists. These artworks constitute today the foundation in which the museum plans to build a more consistent and inclusive collection, one that can better represent the diversity and creativity of Latin American artists.

Latin American Art at Mia II

Transcendent Clay: The Kondō Family’s Path of Porcelain Innovations

Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys

Mary Sully: Native Modern

Charles Matson Lume: lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin)

Remnants

Teen Perspectives: Minneapolis as Monument

Spanning almost a century of creativity, &#8220;Transcendent Clay&#8221; offers a panoramic look at the achievements of the Kondō family of ceramicists based in Kyoto, Japan. The legacy of porcelain-making began with Kondō Yūzō (1902–1985) in the 1930s and continued with his sons Yutaka (1932–1983) and Hiroshi (1936–2012), who broke free to pursue original, individual expressions. Ultimately it was the grandson Takahiro (born 1958) who emerged as the family’s greatest innovator by developing the secret technique of applying a “silver mist” (gintekisai) of metallic droplets to his modern forms.
This exhibition brings together a wide range of works including freehand-painted vases, pure-white jars, and Takahiro’s dramatic shapes and textures, which he describes as “water born from fire.” Most of the works are from the collection of Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz, long-time supporters of Mia.

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“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is a groundbreaking exhibition that marks the first major showcase of the Dean Collection, owned by renowned musicians and cultural icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys.
Organized by the Brooklyn Museum, “Giants” highlights nearly 100 significant works by Black diasporic artists, including Gordon Parks, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson, Amy Sherald, and more. The exhibition reflects the Deans&#8217; passion for supporting established and emerging artists while fostering important dialogues about art, culture, and identity.
“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is organized by Kimberli Gant, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.
Individual tickets go on sale February 14. Mia members at the Contributor level and above can reserve tickets early starting February 1.
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For school group and university group tours of &#8220;Giants,&#8221; please submit a <a href="https://form.asana.com/?k=tqLIfnaCtjGam1FAAZ24Nw&amp;d=67236691525505">tour request form</a>.
Prepare your students for a visit with this guide.
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Color photo of an African American woman with an afro wearing a beaded halter top set against a blue background

Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota, Mary Sully was a reclusive artist who, between the 1920s and 1940s, created highly distinctive works informed by her Native American and settler ancestry. This first solo exhibition of Sully&#8217;s groundbreaking production highlights recent Mia acquisitions, works that complicate traditional notions of Native American and modern art.
Major support for Mia’s presentation provided by Lorraine R Hart.

Detailed view of Mary Sully's Spring artwork, which shows a repeated pattern of green, red, and beige shapes

Charles Matson Lume’s exhibition sparks joy, awe, and curiosity using materials like proofing paper, Mylar emergency sleeping bags, hologram tape, and spotlights. By presenting ordinary materials in a new light, the artist seeks to inspire an appreciation for life’s fleeting moments. The exhibition is dedicated to Gustaf Sobin (1935–2005), a poet and important mentor for the artist.
Matson Lume is a visual artist whose art is engaged in the pas de deux of light and matter. He’s exhibited his work at numerous institutions, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin, Ireland), Babel Kunst (Trondheim, Norway), Kemijärvi Art Gallery (Kemijärvi, Finland), and Hunter College, (New York City). Matson Lume has received fellowships from the Bush Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. He&#8217;s participated in artist residencies in Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and the United States. Matson Lume holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lives in Saint Paul.
The exhibition is part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, celebrating 50 years in 2025.
Support provided by RBC Wealth Management.

an abstract pieces of art with blue, teal, and orange colors made from plastic sheeting, hologram tape, mylar sleeping bags, sequined fabric, paper mache snowy owls, EMT conduit tubing corners, Kodak proofing paper, Bytek tape, and monofilament line

“Remnants” brings together artworks by South African artists who focus on the invisible and visible structures of colonization and apartheid (1948–1994)—and their historical impacts. In some instances, artists directly critique the destructive forces of apartheid on South Africans of color. By centering the everyday lives of people living under the regime of apartheid, these works reveal the individual humanity of their subjects while illuminating the forces of their oppression. In response to South Africa’s democratization in 1994, artists in this show devise fresh visual language for a newly expressive era. Drawn mostly from Mia’s collection, the works within this show reveal the breadth of artistic practice that flourished during and after the apartheid regime.

Black-and-white photograph of overgrown hedges that have become so thick they look like a wall

This exhibition features paintings, drawings, prints, and more by local high school student artists who participated in a program reflecting on the last five years in Minneapolis. Taking inspiration from the exhibition &#8220;Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,&#8221; students were encouraged to see themselves as giants. Artists Kprecia Ambers, Leslie Barlow, Graci Horne, Lissa Karpeh, and Akiko Ostlund, whose work is also on view, worked with students during multiple visits to create this powerful exhibition.
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Photograph of the backs of three young people who are standing in front of an artwork in a Mia gallery

Upcoming Exhibitions

Bizen: Contemporary Expressions of an Ancient Japanese Pottery

Splendid Patchwork: Buddhist Monastic Robes

O’ Powa O’ Meng: The Art and Legacy of Jody Folwell

JoAnn Verburg: Aftershocks

Bizen ware, characterized by its rich reddish-brown clay with natural ash glaze, is one of Japan’s six pottery traditions. Originating from today’s Okayama prefecture on the Seto Inland Sea, its history reaches back to the 14th century. It peaked during the late 16th century when the tea masters in and around Kyoto, the center of culture in Japan, found it most appealing. With the modernization of Japan in the mid-19th century, Bizen almost disappeared, but the tradition was revived in the 1930s and many artists since have explored its potential. While some have stayed closer to conventional forms, others have surprised with new shapes while staying true to the core of Bizen. This exhibition showcases the journey in Bizen from the 16th century to the 21st.

2019.92.4

This magnificent group of robes from Mia’s collection belonged to high-ranking Buddhist priests. Known as kashaya, they were designed to be draped over the left shoulder, under the right arm, and fastened in front under the left shoulder, and are more elaborate than the robes worn by most Buddhist monks. Yet they were fabricated from small squares sewn together, symbolizing the humble nature of Buddha. Within these patchwork squares are various Buddhist motifs and sometimes imperial imagery in which dragons cavort in the celestial landscape. Rich with courtly symbolism, the robes were likely worn in Buddhist ceremonies at monasteries patronized by the court or within the Forbidden City itself.

A potter from Kha&#8217;p&#8217;o Owingeh (Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico), Jody Folwell has revolutionized Pueblo pottery—and Native art more broadly—over the past five decades. The first Pueblo artist to place personal, political and social narratives on her pottery, she has pushed the boundaries of form, content, and design while remaining firmly within the art traditions of her community.
This exhibition, &#8220;O’ Powa O’ Meng&#8221; (“I came here, I got here, I’m still going”), was organized by Mia and the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia. These iconic works span the breadth of Folwell&#8217;s groundbreaking career, demonstrating the arc of her artistic development and integrating a trailblazing Native American artist within the wider canon of contemporary American art.
This exhibition was organized by the Fralin Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
This catalogue and exhibition are made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Major support for Mia&#8217;s presentation provided by Lorraine R Hart.

In 2016, while working in Spoleto, Italy, JoAnn Verburg experienced three major earthquakes. The aftershocks, which continued for months, unnerved her. With parts of buildings still falling around her, she couldn’t shake a sense of impending catastrophe. Her anxieties were enhanced by the major events that followed, from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to the global pandemic. For Verburg, as for so many others, the world felt dangerously out of balance.
Long known for her exquisite landscapes and innovative techniques in photography and video, Verburg questioned how to continue making beautiful art amid the devastating reality of world events. Beneath the surface of the mesmerizing images of nature in &#8220;Aftershocks,&#8221; the question lingers, as she explores loss, dread, and the healing power of art in a time of worldwide change and upheaval.
Presenting Sponsor: David Wilson and Michael Peterman
Major Sponsors: Samuel Heins and Stacey Mills Heins
Supporting Sponsor: UBS Financial Services

Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection

Now Open

Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection

Featured Exhibitions

Survival of the Fittest: Lessons from La Fontaine in Textile and Porcelain

Hokusai | Monet

The True America: Photographs by Ernest Cole

Artists at Work: The Mia Staff Art Show

City Views

And more by more they dream their sleep: Mezzotints by Yōzō Hamaguchi

A Generous Outlook: Gifts from Fay Gallus and Richard Sweet

Roshan Ganu: रातराणी: The Night Blooming Jasmine

More to See

Otto Dix: The War Portfolio

From the Divine to the Mortal: Storytelling in Chinese Painting

Cassatt on Paper

Catch of the Day: Humans and Marine Animals in Japan

At the Moulin Rouge

Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection

Revolutions, Republics, and Restoration

A Little Fun at My Work: Women in Design and Craft

Latin American Art at Mia II