Exhibitions

Upcoming Exhibitions

The 2025 theme “Belonging Begins Here: Our Stories, Our County, and Our Pride” invites students across Hennepin County to explore the meaning of belonging through personal and local lenses. This year’s program encourages participants to reflect on their identities, communities, and shared spaces that foster inclusion and connection.
Students highlight stories, landmarks, and cultural touch points within their districts that bring people together or represent sources of pride. Through creative expression and storytelling, the program aims to celebrate the rich diversity and unity within Hennepin County, promoting a deeper understanding of what it means to belong. By focusing on local narratives, the initiative empowers young voices to shape a more inclusive and connected community rooted in shared experience and mutual respect.

simplified, close-up facial portrait with large brown eyes, purple nose, and lavender and green skin

Belonging Begins Here: Our Stories, Our County, and Our Pride

In the first half of the 20th century, Germany experienced the last years of the German Empire, World War I and the revolution that followed, the liberal Weimar Republic, the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust. Modern art played an important role in the discourse of the period, and politics influenced the arts.
This exhibition features more than 70 paintings and sculptures from the collections of the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery), the distinguished modern art museum of the Berlin State Museums. It traces the German experience in the visual arts over four decades.
Beginning with the Expressionist reaction and opposition to the conservative artistic regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the exhibition moves on to the New Objectivity movement, the modern style of the 1920s. Between the wars, German artists participated in international experiments with abstraction. Painters and sculptors critiqued social currents, but most were silenced under the Nazis. This exhibition concludes with an epilogue that examines the ambiguous aftermath of World War II.
&#8220;Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945&#8221; has been organized by the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, in cooperation with Mia.

Painting of a woman with black-brown bobbed hair and curls falling over her forehead wearing a black dress and holding a cigarette seated at a table in a nightclub setting with two mean behind her and a champagne chiller holding an opened bottle of of champagne

Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

&#8220;Year of the Horse: Hoofbeats through Time&#8221; celebrates the enduring power, beauty, and symbolism of horses in Chinese art and culture. Across millennia, the horse has galloped through China’s imagination—as chariot puller, zodiac sign, loyal companion, and poetic metaphor.
This exhibition explores the horse as both a real creature and a cultural emblem—embodying strength, status, virtue, and aspiration. From ritual bronzes to scholar’s miniatures, imperial scrolls to popular expressions, the horse reveals a rich interplay of mythology, mobility, and meaning. As we welcome a new Year of the Horse, these timeless images invite reflection on what it means to move, strive, and endure.

Year of the Horse: Hoofbeats through Time

Derived from a Nahuatl word, a huipil is a traditional blouse worn by women throughout Mesoamerica, particularly among the Maya, since before the 16th century when Spanish explorers arrived in the region. The garment remains especially prevalent in Guatemala’s highland regions, where a majority of Maya descendants reside today.
Huipiles are traditionally handwoven on a backstrap loom in two or three rectangular panels, later sewn together. Decoration, motifs, and color choices serve as a visual language that uniquely identifies the wearer’s village and social standing.
The selection presented in this exhibition comes from a significant donation of textiles made to the museum by Richard Simmons and his wife. Their contribution has greatly enhanced representation of Latin American culture in the museum’s collection.

Related Events

Guatemala woman's ceremonial blouse, or huipil, featuring white, red and orange colors

An Indigenous Art: Huipiles from Mia&#8217;s Collection

This exhibition brings together paintings and photographs from the collection of Dan Shogren and Susan Meyer that explore the rich and complex meanings of industrial art during the first half of the 20th century. Spanning the late 1920s to the early 1940s, these works illuminate the importance of artistic creativity during a period shaped by economic hardship, social unrest, and the dominance of industrial manufacturing. Paintings by Harry Gottlieb, Edmund Lewandowski, Ben Shahn, and others appear alongside photographs by prominent figures such as Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, and Dorothea Lange, offering a unique cross-section of artistic life during a tumultuous era.

Black-and-white photograph of a cemetery with brick rowhouses and steel mills in the background

Built to Last: The Shogren-Meyer Collection of American Art

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

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

<blockquote>“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
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—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself, 51,” Leaves of Grass (1855)
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For 250 years, the United States has defined itself in terms of plurality. Its Latin motto, e pluribus unum (out of many, one), notes the interdependence of the multiple and the singular in our national conception.
This exhibition explores the diversity of American experience that photographs can hold, and the manner in which photographers have sought to “contain multitudes,” in the words of the 19th-century writer Walt Whitman, by maintaining an expansive ecosystem of images celebrating the contradictions of American life, culture, and history.

young woman wearing a turquoise tank top, turquoise and black skirt, white shoes and white beaded headdress, seated bareback on a white speckled horse, standing in front of a backdrop painted with blue sky and white clouds

Containing Multitudes

Utagawa Hiroshige&#8217;s (1797–1858) iconic landscape series “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” (modern-day Tokyo), first published in the 1850s, stands as one of the most celebrated collections of Japanese prints. Individual prints from this series of 118 are widely regarded as some of the finest achievements in Japanese art. Hiroshige captures locations in and around Edo during all four seasons, often from unique perspectives.
Inspired by Hiroshige’s compositions, British artist Emily Allchurch (born 1974) created “Tokyo Story” using digital collage and photography. Allchurch traveled to Tokyo in 2009 and visited places pictured by Hiroshige. While many places have changed radically and bear no resemblance to Hiroshige&#8217;s images, Allchurch photographed details of the urban landscapes she encountered through various angles and focuses.
Following Hiroshige&#8217;s compositional arrangements, dramatic cropping, and color gradations, Allchurch also manipulated details of the photographic data to create views that are at once familiar and strangely fresh. This exhibition connects the past and the present by featuring Hiroshige’s captivating sceneries along with Allchurch’s modern adaptations.

Print of a Japanese temple covered in snow with people walking around

Hiroshige&#8217;s 100 Views of Edo x Emily Allchurch

In the 1830s, Scottish artist David Roberts journeyed through Egypt, capturing its monumental temples, tombs, palaces, and timeless landscapes with dramatic vision. Trained as a theatrical scene painter, Roberts conveyed romantic grandeur and scale like few before him, balancing accuracy with artistic imagination.
His on-site drawings were later transformed into hand-colored lithographs and published in the landmark series The Holy Land, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia (1842–1849). With the invention of photography in 1839, these prints, widely celebrated in their day, became the last of the great hand-made views of Egypt.

view into an Egyptian temple hall lined with colossal carved statues of pharaohs, buried up the knees in sand, with a small group of men in Arab dress gathered at the center of the hall

Along the Nile with David Roberts

This exhibition explores the intimate world of Chinese fan painting—where poetry, calligraphy, and painted images converge in the palm of the hand. Featuring circular silk fans from the Song and Yuan dynasties (10th–14th centuries) and folding fans from the Ming and Qing period (14th–early 20th centuries), these works reflect centuries of refined aesthetic practice, personal expression, seasonal contemplation, and spiritual reflection.
Whether created by court artists or literati scholars, each fan carries the rhythm of the brush and the breeze: a fleeting moment captured in ink. Drawn from Mia’s rich collection, the selected fans invite viewers to experience how art, nature, and verse were held—literally and symbolically—in one’s grasp.

fan mounted as an album leaf; two fishermen at sea during a storm; rocks and bending trees in foreground lower right, fishermen at lower left, bamboo behind boat with a mountain range in the distance

Ink Rhythms on the Breeze: The Art of Chinese Fan Paintings

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

Amy Usdin: After All

When we photograph a landmark, we zoom in to capture a detail. We pan out to better document the expanse of a vista. We might even include a person as a reference for scale.
Drawn entirely from Mia’s collection, the artworks in “Site Lines: Photographing Historic Spaces” reveal how photographers have chosen to document historical sites since the 19th century. What emerges are conventions that cut across countries and time, providing us insight into photography’s role in determining the history and meaning of built environments around the world.

Photograph of the Sphinx, partially excavated, in the foreground and one of the great pyramids in the background

Site Lines: Photographing Historic Spaces

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

Crowning the North: Silver Treasures from Bergen, Norway

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

The Weirdening of the Renaissance

José María Velasco: A View of Mexico

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 5, 2026</li>
</ul>

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

2023.101.8

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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WCCO TV: Mia exhibition touts &#8220;The Weirdening of the Renaissance&#8221;
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Pencil sketch of four muscular naked men on top of each other's shoulders against a beige background

2024.79

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.
<h2>Access Art Your Way</h2>
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Look for the “C” symbol next to artworks in the gallery. With your phone, simply tap the icon to view label information in the format that works best for you, whether that’s translation into 136 languages, large-print text, or other accessible options.
Please note: This accessibility feature is available exclusively for this exhibition.
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<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-113411" src="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/07111531/Velasco_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-855x111.png" alt="lockup of sponsor logos" width="723" height="94" srcset="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/07111531/Velasco_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-855x111.png 855w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/07111531/Velasco_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-2000x259.png 2000w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/07111531/Velasco_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-385x50.png 385w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/07111531/Velasco_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-768x99.png 768w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/07111531/Velasco_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-1536x199.png 1536w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/07111531/Velasco_SponsorLockup_Horizontal_Wide_K-2-2048x265.png 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px" />
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This guide highlights a selection of Velasco’s paintings featured in the exhibition. Use the discussion prompts and activities to look closely at the paintings and think about some of the ideas that were so important to Velasco and his art.
<a style="color: black;" href="https://new.artsmia.org/programs/teachers-and-students/teacher-resources/exhibition-guide-jose-maria-velasco"><button class="background-black">Go to Guide</button></a>

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https://new.artsmia.org/programs/teachers-and-students/teacher-resources/exhibition-guide-jose-maria-velasco

painting of a valley in Mexico, with ridges of brown, yellow and green, and a lake and snow-capped mountains in the distance

Current Exhibitions

Remnants

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

From the Divine to the Mortal: Storytelling in Chinese Painting

Radiance

“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

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.
Saudi American artist Hend Al-Mansour studied medicine in Cairo, Egypt, and practiced medicine in Saudi Arabia. She was a fellow in cardiology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester. In addition to her medical degree, Al-Mansour holds an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MA in art history from the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul. She&#8217;s exhibited internationally and received numerous awards, including the Minnesota State Art Board&#8217;s (MSAB) Creative Support in 2024 and 2022; the MSAB 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

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

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