Exhibitions

Upcoming Exhibitions

Contemplative, humorous, inventive, and surreal. These are just a few of many apt descriptions of the artworks of the Japanese artist Kenji Nakahashi. His active imagination, curiosity for his immediate environment, and embrace of the mundane provided endless inspiration and subjects for his art, inviting questions and reflections about life and everyday objects.
Born and educated in Japan, Nakahashi moved to New York City in 1973 at the age of 26, finding in the bustling metropolis the creative stimuli that would sustain his practice for the rest of his life. Best known for his concept-driven photography, Nakahashi actively experimented with a diverse range of mediums, including drawing, painting, collage, and printmaking. Relying on absurdity, visual and textual puns, and unusual juxtapositions, Nakahashi’s enigmatic images encourage viewers to contemplate both the strange and captivating aspects of everyday life.
Blending playfulness and intellectual vigor, Nakahashi often toyed with viewer’s expectations, depicting such mundane objects as street signs, drinking glasses, a hot-water bottle, and analog clocks in unfamiliar or even surreal contexts. Other subjects include storefronts, subway platforms, soaring skyscrapers, and mysterious fictional landscapes. He routinely flattened and fragmented the built environment of the city and its inhabitants into abstract geometric and kaleidoscopic forms, resulting in images that surprise, challenge, and delight.
Celebrating a recent anonymous gift of Nakahashi’s work to Mia’s collection, this exhibition showcases more than 60 photographs, prints, drawings, watercolors, collages, and one painting, representing the artist’s career from the 1970s through the early 1990s.

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Two identical round clocks placed on opposite trays of a metal balance scale. Both clocks have white faces with black numbers and hands. The clock on the left shows the time at 12:04, while the clock on the right displays 12:15.

Kenji Nakahashi: A Confident Life

For as long as there have been cameras, photographers have trained their lenses upon the human form: our heads, shoulders, knees, toes, and much more. The body is an expressive instrument, able to convey meaning through the smallest of gestures: a flick of the wrist, a purse of the lips, a bow from the waist.
Drawn from Mia’s permanent collection, all of the print photography in this show invites us to revel in the wonder of our corporeal nature—our vast capacities for communication, even in stillness, to manifest joy, playfulness, sorrow, alienation, and many other emotions through bodily signs and signatures.

Two separate photographic images forming one large image; large black-and-white image of three clasped hands at bottom center; smaller color images surrounding image of hands and handwritten notes

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

Meruhen, the Japanese word for fairy tales, originated from the German word Märchen, coined in the 15th century. The word meruhen first appeared in the early 20th century among Japanese writers interested in European romanticism and children’s literature. It soon became mainstream, and fairy tales, not only of German origin, remain popular today.
Several print artists like Kawano Kaoru (1916–1965) and Minami Keiko (1911–2004) presented fairy tale settings in their work, depicting young girls in innocent, dream-like scenarios, interacting with birds or other animals. This exhibition showcases their work along with prints by Kanamori Yoshio (1922–2016), Hori Hikaru (1952–2019), and Suzuki Atsuko (born 1968).

The illustration shows a stylized figure standing on a hill, holding a staff. Next to the person is a small dog. The hill is covered with curved, dotted lines creating a stippled pattern. To the left, a cluster of sheep is also depicted using similar lines. In the upper background, a sun with radiating lines is visible. The entire image is monochromatic, with shades of beige and light brown.

Meruhen: Japanese Prints of Fairy Tales

Few people outshine Mary’s glorious stardom. During 2,000 years of veneration, many legends have augmented the biblical outlines of her life. The stories have provided rich inspiration for artists, who often made their best efforts to create beautiful and affecting images of the Blessed Mother, Virgin, Mother of God, Our Lady, Madonna, Queen of Heaven.
This exhibition traces the life of this modest, yet courageous woman through prints and drawings from Mia’s extensive collection. They show her doing the ordinary—caring for children, moving house, and picnicking—and the extraordinary—greeting royalty and physically rising to heaven.

Black and white drawing depicting two figures, Mary and Joseph, seated in a forest-like setting with trees and bushes. Both are wearing flowing garments, and Mary is holding a child.

Mary

This exhibition features paintings, sculptures, and religious images from the collection of Mary Ingebrand-Pohlad, a longtime trustee and supporter of Mia. Living between Minneapolis and Palm Springs, California, the collector has built a collection that reflects California as a place where American and Latin American cultures intersect.
Blending depictions of the arid landscapes of the American West with works by artists of Latin American descent—many of whom have lived or worked in the United States—the collection offers a lens through which to understand the region’s cultural interplay. Artists such as Diego Rivera, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, and Miguel Covarrubias invite viewers to consider the resilience and creativity that emerge from these crossings, where geography and identity continuously shape one another.

abstract painting of a woman's face with expressive eyes and gray-brown hair and swirls of orange, red, and brown colors in the background

Meeting Point: The Mary Ingebrand-Pohlad Collection of Latin American Art

Step into Parisian luxury at Mia. &#8220;Paris Couture&#8221; brings more than 80 haute couture masterpieces from the Palais Galliera, spanning the late 19th century to today.
The exhibition features icons such as Dior, Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, and Grès. Together, these extraordinary garments show couture as one of the great art forms of the modern era. You’ll see imagination matched with flawless technique and lavish materials. Get close to the details and discover how couture ateliers transformed dressmaking into high art.
The galleries create an immersive, opulent experience built for shared wonder and slow looking. It’s an ideal evening or weekend outing—only at Mia for a limited time.
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Vintage floral gown with puffed sleeves on a mannequin.

Paris Couture

Skulls and skeletons are a popular subject in Japanese art. They appear in paintings, prints, and book illustrations as secondary elements but also as primary subjects, especially with the increased understanding of anatomy in the 19th century.
This exhibition shows skeletons in a life-like, humorous manner, exhibiting a playfulness to the usually terrifying and haunting nature of skeletons. The highlight is the recently acquired pair of six-panel folding screens by Takeuchi Ryūa, a truly memorable and unique work of skeletons at play.

Skeletons with plants and lanterns on a textured background.

Bare Bones: Skeletons in Japanese Art

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

And More by More They Dream Their Sleep: Mezzotints by Yōzō Hamaguchi Part II

Painted Poetry: Art of the Rajput Courts

The Abstract Worlds of Yoshida Hodaka and Chizuko

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. 
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="auto, (max-width: 85px) 100vw, 85px" />

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.
This exhibition is presented in two parts:
<ul>
<li data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Part I: November 27, 2024–July 20, 2025</li>
<li>Part II: August 2, 2025–April 26, 2026</li>
</ul>

abstract painting of wavy green, pink, and blue lines against a black background

2023.101.8

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.

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

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.

Current Exhibitions

Gatsby at 100

Crowning the North: Silver Treasures from Bergen, Norway

Intimate Details of the Natural World: Botanical Art of Minnesota from the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary Florilegium

Amy Usdin: After All

“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.
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To mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby, The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library is convening a variety of programs that invite us to revisit the book and consider how its themes apply today.
<a href="https://thefriends.org/fitzgerald/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><button class="black-background">Learn More</button></a>

The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library

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

Bergen, a vital Hanseatic port, nurtured a centuries-long silversmithing tradition shaped by global trade and European influence. This exhibition traces the craft’s evolution from the Baroque period of the early 17th century to the early 20th century, culminating in the Viking Revival of the late 18th and 19th centuries—a period of national awakening inspired by archaeological finds and Norse mythology.
Notable are the fantastical silver Viking ships by Marius Hammer, a master of the revival style, blending historical motifs with dazzling craftsmanship. Alongside bridal crowns, tankards, and domestic wares, these works reflect how Norwegian silversmiths expressed identity, wealth, and cultural pride through silver across eras of profound artistic transformation.
This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in collaboration with KODE and Mia.

small silver and enamel sculpture of a Viking dragon boat

The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary Florilegium consists of illustrative artworks depicting the unique plants in the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, located in Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis. A visual historical record of a selection of Minnesota-native flora found in the 18-acre Garden, the florilegium captures intimate details of the natural world in a changing environment.
Created by artists of the Minnesota School of Botanical Art, these artworks bring to life native plants from the oldest public wildflower garden in the United States. They further the tradition of botanical illustration that combines both the scientific and the aesthetic in drawing and painting.

Drawing of an Aspen tree, with white bark and green, heart-shaped leaves

Amy Usdin portrays the continuous cycle of life and entropy in her fiber art. Her exhibition explores the blurred lines between past and present, emphasizing our fragile ties with each other and the earth while advocating for the stewardship of both.
With a BFA in graphic communications from Washington University in St. Louis, Usdin spent years as an art director before starting her studio practice in 2018. She&#8217;s exhibited widely, including prestigious surveys that represent the diversity and breadth of contemporary craft and fiber art. Usdin&#8217;s work has been published in Fiber Art Now’s Excellence in Fibers, and she&#8217;s received multiple awards and grants from the Surface Design Association, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.
Usdin is a 2024 recipient of the Stone &amp; DeGuire Contemporary Art Award from Washington University, the 2024–2025 Minneapolis College of Art and Design–Jerome Fellowship, and the 2025–2028 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship.
This exhibition is part of the <a href="https://new.artsmia.org/exhibitions/maep/">Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program</a>, celebrating 50 years in 2025.
Support provided by RBC Wealth Management.

view of a room with a hanging sheer textile in neutral shades with three small display tables places in front