Exhibitions

<h1 style="font-size: 2.75rem;">The True America: Photographs by Ernest Cole</h1>
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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.  
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On view

Rajput paintings evoke many moods and senses. They tell stories about the beliefs, desires, myths, poetry, and power that shaped the royal Rajput courts of northern India during the 16th to 19th centuries. Rajput artists chose subject matter that was meant to engage all of our senses (taste, touch, smell, sound, and sight) and elicit emotional responses—an aesthetic experience known as rasa. Love, laughter, fury, compassion, disgust, horror, heroism, wonder, and tranquility are the nine rasas of Indian aesthetics and offer one way to interpret Rajput paintings.

Related Events

A watercolor painting of over 10 people watching a thunderstorm approach. Some people are inside and some are on a balcony.

Painted Poetry: Art of the Rajput Courts

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.
Sponsored by:
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Questions about how to get involved in Teen Perspectives? Email teenprograms@artsmia.org.

Photograph of the backs of three young people who are standing in front of an artwork in a Mia gallery

Teen Perspectives: Minneapolis as Monument

“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

Remnants

Vivid brightness. Glowing. Deep pink. These are some of the definitions listed in Merriam-Webster&#8217;s for “radiance.” Many of these qualities are present in this exhibition of drawings and paintings on paper selected from Mia’s collection, including promised gifts to the museum. Color and light (often called tone or tonal value) are fundamental elements of visual depiction. Whether abstract or representative, each featured work is an eye-catching enticement for viewers to experience how vivid color and light interact. The artists in &#8220;Radiance&#8221; explore the visual effects of capturing intense sensations of color and light as a primary means for optical description, perceptual expression, and generating meaning.

Abstract collage of a dragon made with the bright colors of red, orange and blue against a muted beige background

Radiance

Charles Matson Lume’s &#8220;lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin),&#8221; 2025, uses common materials such as plastic sheeting, hologram tape, and light, while the word lacuna is uncommon and means gap or empty space, derived from the Latin words lake or lagoon. The themes found in his site-specific installation are based on light, poetry, beauty, and mortality.
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, Adolph &amp; Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. 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.
<div id="attachment_112626" style="width: 112px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-112626" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-112626" src="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/18155320/ext_202503140001-Web-800px-425x570.jpg" alt="Black-and-white photograph of a white man with a bushy mustache wearing glasses and a tie and sports jacket" width="102" height="137" srcset="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/18155320/ext_202503140001-Web-800px-425x570.jpg 425w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/18155320/ext_202503140001-Web-800px-172x231.jpg 172w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/18155320/ext_202503140001-Web-800px.jpg 547w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 102px) 100vw, 102px" />Portrait of Gustaf Sobin. Courtesy of Esther Sobin. © Esther Sobin.</div>
Gustaf Sobin (1935–2005) was a poet and novelist who was born in Boston and earned a BA from Brown University. In 1962, he moved to Paris, met mentor René Char, and settled in Provence. Sobin’s poetry explored existence and transcendence through negation, omission, and lacuna—voids or gaps in meaning. His notable collections include Wind Chrysalid’s Rattle (1980), Towards the Blanched Alphabets (1998), and Collected Poems (2010). He also translated works by Henri Michaux and René Char. Sobin lived in France for over 40 years.
Learn more about his work and read a 2013 review of his Collected Poems in <a href="https://raintaxi.com/collected-poems-gustaf-sobin">Rain Taxi</a>.
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

Charles Matson Lume: lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin)

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 European 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

Mary Sully: Native Modern

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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.
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For school 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>.
See the Deans (Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys), &#8220;Giants,&#8221; and Mia on <a href="https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/gma3/video/alicia-keys-swizz-beatz-tour-art-world-120416625" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Good Morning America</a>.
Mia offers free admission to ticketed exhibitions for veterans and active duty military and families, Minnesota WIC, MCAD students and staff, Minneapolis Park Board and Recreation Staff, museum professionals, and neighborhood groups. You can reserve free admission tickets by calling Visitor Experience at 612-870-3000.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-110712" src="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12121315/Giants_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-855x130.png" alt="Logos of companies sponsoring the exhibition" width="934" height="142" srcset="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12121315/Giants_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-855x130.png 855w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12121315/Giants_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-2000x304.png 2000w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12121315/Giants_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-385x59.png 385w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12121315/Giants_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-768x117.png 768w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12121315/Giants_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-1536x234.png 1536w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12121315/Giants_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-2048x311.png 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 934px) 100vw, 934px" />

Watch a conversation with the Deans (Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys) and Kimberli Gant, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, for an insider’s look into “Giants.” They explore the origins of the show, their collaborations with artists, and the powerful works that bring the exhibition to life.
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The Deans (Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys), Kimberli Gant, and “Giants”

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Deborah Roberts is a mixed-media artist celebrated for her artworks that explore topics of Black childhood. This conversation provides a unique chance to hear Roberts share her artistic journey, techniques, and the motivations behind her powerful work.
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Artist and educator Nick Cave creates spaces of memorial by combining found historical objects with contemporary dialogues on gun violence and death. His renowned Soundsuits are sculptural responses to the anxiety, trauma, and loss caused by gun violence, while also holding space for hope, renewal, and healing. Cave shares deeper insights into his practice and the impact of his work within and beyond the spaces of the museum.
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Meleko Mokgosi is an artist, associate professor, and co-director of graduate studies at the Yale School of Art, as well as the co-director of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York City. He&#8217;s renowned for his large-scale works that engage history painting and cinematic tropes to uncover notions of colonialism, democracy, and liberation across African history.
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Use this guide in your classroom before visiting the museum or in the galleries during a self-guided visit. It highlights selected artworks that illustrate each of the exhibition’s main themes.
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Explore the exhibition together by looking, thinking, and discussing artworks and ideas. Use the questions in this guide to inspire conversation—pick and choose which ones are right for you.
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This guide is a tool to help teenagers explore the exhibition. Experience each room of the exhibition with the corresponding portion of the guide.
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This guide is designed for adults to use as they explore the exhibition. It offers suggestions, prompts, and important context that may provide useful information as you experience this special exhibition.
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Listen to the soundtrack playing in the exhibition.
<a style="color: black;" href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5dSEza6GrXKRBxizFlOT0g?si=etnK0m7FRwakpRjIq82RrA&amp;nd=1&amp;dlsi=3fa19625c8d14a58" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><button class="background-black">Listen to Playlist</button></a>

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Hear the songs curated by DJ Runna for the exhibition&#8217;s opening party at Mia.
<a style="color: black;" href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Guld7dBYa82qe6GyoZtup?si=NSgWoc_xR0u_o58RPUw1bw" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><button class="background-black">Listen to Playlist</button></a>

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Color photo of an African American woman with an afro wearing a beaded halter top set against a blue background

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

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.

porcelain statue of a head and top of the torso with arms at side with blue and green underglazes and "silver mist" overglaze

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

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.

Use this guide to prepare for a visit to the exhibition or to stimulate conversations in the galleries. Consider printing a few guides so that students can get a close look at the artworks by working in small groups.
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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 19th century.

Drawing of pink, peach, and light red chrysanthemums and a horsefly by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai

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.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-110822" src="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085743/2012_aperture_wordmark_black.jpg" alt="" width="191" height="41" />
This exhibition is made possible, in part, with generous support from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-110821" src="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085228/Ford-single-black-855x107.png" alt="" width="191" height="24" srcset="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085228/Ford-single-black-855x107.png 855w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085228/Ford-single-black-2000x251.png 2000w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085228/Ford-single-black-385x48.png 385w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085228/Ford-single-black-768x96.png 768w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085228/Ford-single-black-1536x193.png 1536w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085228/Ford-single-black-2048x257.png 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 191px) 100vw, 191px" />
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-110820" src="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085126/2018-LogoBW-Horizontal-855x428.png" alt="" width="179" height="90" srcset="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085126/2018-LogoBW-Horizontal-855x428.png 855w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085126/2018-LogoBW-Horizontal-2000x1000.png 2000w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085126/2018-LogoBW-Horizontal-385x193.png 385w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085126/2018-LogoBW-Horizontal-768x384.png 768w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085126/2018-LogoBW-Horizontal-1536x768.png 1536w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085126/2018-LogoBW-Horizontal-2048x1024.png 2048w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/18085126/2018-LogoBW-Horizontal-800x400.png 800w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 179px) 100vw, 179px" />

Watch a  conversation with Leslie Wilson, Academic Curator and Director of Research Programs at the Art Institute of Chicago, as she explores the complexities of South African photojournalist Ernest Cole&#8217;s documentary work in the United States.
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Leslie Wilson: Is This the America of Ebony?

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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

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.
A second rotation of this exhibition will run August 2, 2025, through April 5, 2026.

yellow-pink cherries with green stems suspended in air set against a black background

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

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.

image of a chinese hunt on a silk screen with people on horses set against a beige background

From the Divine to the Mortal: Storytelling in Chinese Painting

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>
In October, Mia held an online contest to give Imai Sadamasa’s Napoleon Fish a nickname. After combing through hundreds of great visitor submissions, the artist chose Edmund Fishgerald.

Photo of a sculpture of a fish in blue, green, teal, and green-yellow tones

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Catch of the Day: Humans and Marine Animals in Japan

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

The Weirdening of the Renaissance

Annotations

Hend Al-Mansour: Mihrabs: Portraits of Arab American Women

Threads of the Way: Daoist Priest Robes from China’s Qing Dynasty

Timber! Art and Woodwork at the Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Gatsby at 100

The Abstract Worlds of Yoshida Hodaka and Chizuko

José María Velasco: A View of Mexico

In the early days of the Renaissance, artists emphasized order. Inspired by ancient Roman architecture and sculpture, they created structured compositions and statuesque figures that evoked lofty, rational thought. However, new ideas began to emerge. In 1506, the excavation of the ancient Laocoön sculpture, depicting the Trojan priest and his sons writhing as they&#8217;re attacked by sea serpents, released Renaissance figures from static poses. Artists began to manipulate the science of perspective and often dropped the idea of images representing the world as seen through a window. Earthy and outlandish thought flourished. Many images became just plain weird. With their creativity unleashed, artists left to us the joy of strangeness.
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Pencil sketch of four muscular naked men on top of each others shoulders against a beige background

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Photography’s mechanical origins have sometimes relegated the medium to that of a tool. The impulse to alter, embellish, and add soon became standard photographic practice. Photographers added colored pigment to the metal surfaces of early daguerreotypes, painted paper photographs, and wrote text directly on their prints and negatives. In sum, they annotated their photographs.
Drawing mostly from Mia’s collection, “Annotations” considers an array of hand-applied interventions on and within photographs, across the medium’s history and through different processes. The photographers’ additive gestures bring viewers closer to a photograph’s role as an object made at a specific time and by a particular individual.

mottled and patchy aerial view of a colorful cityscape that is intersected by a river, and is rendered in blue, white, yellow, and pink pigments with a white sky

For her exhibition, Hend Al-Mansour features four installation portraits of Arab women from Minnesota. Each work explores the women’s relationships with their heritage, as interpreted by the artist. By blending traditional motifs and architectural elements with portraiture, the artist creates unique portrayals of Arab American women and their involvement in our communities. Alongside her installations, Al-Mansour is also debuting a new animation.
Al-Mansour is a Saudi American artist who also studied and practiced medicine in Cairo, Egypt, where she gained a reputation among her colleagues for the artwork she drew in doctor’s rooms. Today, her art practice reflects her experiences while amplifying historical and contemporary Muslim women. In addition to her medical degree, Al-Mansour holds an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an M.A. in art history from St. Thomas University. She&#8217;s exhibited internationally and received numerous awards, including the Minnesota State Art Board&#8217;s Creative Support in 2022, the Artist Initiative grant in 2019, the McKnight Fellowship in 2018, the Jerome Fellowship of Printmaking in 2013/14, and the Juror&#8217;s Award of the Contemporary Islamic Art in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2012. Al-Mansour is a member of Rosalux Gallery; the Interfaith Artists group; and The Habibties, a group of multiethnic women artists that promotes cultural diversity in the United States.
This exhibition is part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, celebrating 50 years in 2025.
Support provided by RBC Wealth Management.

Photo of a room constructed of fabric with an arched entry

Hend Al Mansour:Mihrab: Portraits of Arab American Women

Daoism, one of China’s major belief systems, envisions a universe guided by harmony and natural order. Emerging as an organized religion after 100 CE, Daoism developed sacred texts, temples, and a celestial pantheon. Among its vivid rituals are embroidered priestly robes—chiefly the sleeveless jiangyi and the long-sleeved daopao. These garments, rich in cosmic symbolism, feature diagrams of paradise, sacred mountains, phoenixes, and zodiac animals. Worn during rituals, they transform priests into embodiments of the cosmos.
Drawn from Mia’s collection, this exhibition reveals the spiritual depth, artistic brilliance, and ritual significance woven into these rare Daoist robes.

Photograph of an outstretch Daoist robe with long sleeves, with white fabric at the cuffs and beige fabric with orange, yellow, and brown embroidery on the body

This exhibition centers on Egon Schiele’s haunting and rarely seen masterpiece, Sawmill (1913), on loan from a private collection. A mill, located on the boundary of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is surrounded by piles of freshly cut timber, but itself seems to be in a process of collapse. The mill can be read as a symbol of the empire, which in 1913 was in a precarious state as its provinces demanded autonomy. The exhibition represents two outcomes for the sawmill’s timber: a wooden bridge in another painting by Schiele and avant-garde wooden furniture, created mostly by Schiele’s friend and mentor, the designer Josef Hoffmann.

Abstract painting of a sawmill surrounded by dark green landscape and distant dark gray mountains

“Gatsby at 100” explores how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby shaped—and was shaped by—the visual art of his time. This exhibition brings together works from Mia’s collection that embody the decadence, excess, and social upheaval of Fitzgerald’s most famous novel, highlighting paintings, books, and works on paper that are rarely on view. Like Fitzgerald, artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, Fernand Léger, and Henri Matisse, as well as regional artists like Wanda Gág and Clement Haupers, endeavored to capture the contradictions of the Jazz Age, a term coined by Fitzgerald himself.

Lithograph of a woman in a black dress reclining on a sofa set against a yellow background

Yoshida Hodaka (1926–1995) was born into a family of artists. He was the second son of Yoshida Hiroshi (1876–1950), a leading Western-style artist in Japan during the early 20th century. Hodaka leaned toward abstraction and began exploring that path after his father&#8217;s death in 1950. In 1953, Hodaka married Chizuko (1924–2017), a trained painter. In addition to oil painting, both Hodaka and Chizuko worked in the woodblock print medium. In 1992, Hodaka created a set of six extraordinarily large prints that depict walls with great attention to structural features and surface details. This exhibition showcases the entire wall set together for the first time, along with Chizuko’s abstract works and playful groups of butterflies.

abstract image: layers of bright orange and bright red loops and curlicues over brown circles extending from the upper left across to the lower right of the painting; bright blue, orange, brown, red, and tan squares throughout; horizontal bright blue narrow rectangles almost dance across the image.

The exhibition “José María Velasco: A View of Mexico” celebrates one of the greatest 19th-century landscape painters in the Americas. Trained at the prestigious Academia de San Carlos, Mexico&#8217;s fine arts academy, Velasco became an influential figure in his home country of Mexico, much like his contemporaries Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church in the United States. His impressive panoramic views of the Valley of Mexico—home of modern-day Mexico City—are painted with exquisite detail, honoring both the country’s rich historical heritage and the rapid modernization it underwent in the late 1800s.
Organized by the National Gallery, London, and Mia, the exhibition showcases paintings coming from renowned museums in Mexico and the Czech Republic. It offers an unprecedented opportunity for Mia’s audience to view Velasco&#8217;s works, as many have seldom been displayed outside their home countries.
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painting of a valley in Mexico, with ridges of brown, yellow and green, and a lake and snow-capped mountains in the distance

Upcoming Exhibitions

Artists at Work: The Mia Staff Art Show

A Generous Outlook: Gifts from Fay Gallus and Richard Sweet

Cassatt on Paper

At the Moulin Rouge

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

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.

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.

image of a woman with dark hair pulled back, wearing a green dress; holding a standing child in her arms; child is wearing a pale green smock; blue background

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

The True America: Photographs by Ernest Cole

Now Open

The True America: Photographs by Ernest Cole

Featured Exhibitions

Painted Poetry: Art of the Rajput Courts

Teen Perspectives: Minneapolis as Monument

Remnants

Radiance

Charles Matson Lume: lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin)

Mary Sully: Native Modern

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

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

More to See

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

Hokusai | Monet

The True America: Photographs by Ernest Cole

City Views

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

Otto Dix: The War Portfolio

From the Divine to the Mortal: Storytelling in Chinese Painting

Catch of the Day: Humans and Marine Animals in Japan

Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection

Revolutions, Republics, and Restoration

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