Exhibitions

Upcoming Exhibitions

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.

Related Events

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

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 men behind her and a champagne chiller holding an opened bottle 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.

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)
</blockquote>
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

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

José María Velasco: A View of Mexico

Royal Bronzes: Cambodian Art of the Divine

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

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

Step into the splendor of Cambodia’s Khmer Empire in &#8220;Royal Bronzes: Cambodian Art of the Divine,&#8221; a groundbreaking exhibition in collaboration with the Guimet – National Museum of Asian Arts, France, and the National Museum of Cambodia. While Angkor’s monumental stone temples are world renowned, this exhibition highlights the empire’s exquisite bronze artistry—statues, ritual objects, and artifacts that reveal a fascinating blend of artistic mastery, religious devotion, and royal power.
Featuring more than 200 objects, including a colossal sculpture of the Hindu god Vishnu—a Cambodian national treasure—this exhibition offers an unprecedented look at Khmer bronze craftsmanship brought to light through recent archaeological discoveries. Witness the enduring legacy of Cambodia’s sacred metallurgical traditions and their profound cultural significance.
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Mia offers free admission to ticketed exhibitions for veterans and active-duty military and families, Minnesota WIC, MCAD students and staff, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board staff, and museum professionals. You can reserve free admission tickets by calling Visitor Experience at 612-870-3000.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-115694" src="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/23152439/ADV253062_Royal-Bronzes_Sponsor_Lockup-V8-Approved-PlusV2_WEB-855x428.jpg" alt="logos of sponsors for the exhibition" width="581" height="291" srcset="https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/23152439/ADV253062_Royal-Bronzes_Sponsor_Lockup-V8-Approved-PlusV2_WEB-855x428.jpg 855w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/23152439/ADV253062_Royal-Bronzes_Sponsor_Lockup-V8-Approved-PlusV2_WEB-2000x1000.jpg 2000w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/23152439/ADV253062_Royal-Bronzes_Sponsor_Lockup-V8-Approved-PlusV2_WEB-385x193.jpg 385w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/23152439/ADV253062_Royal-Bronzes_Sponsor_Lockup-V8-Approved-PlusV2_WEB-768x384.jpg 768w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/23152439/ADV253062_Royal-Bronzes_Sponsor_Lockup-V8-Approved-PlusV2_WEB-1536x768.jpg 1536w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/23152439/ADV253062_Royal-Bronzes_Sponsor_Lockup-V8-Approved-PlusV2_WEB-2048x1024.jpg 2048w, https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/23152439/ADV253062_Royal-Bronzes_Sponsor_Lockup-V8-Approved-PlusV2_WEB-800x400.jpg 800w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 581px) 100vw, 581px" />

Mia members at all levels can see the exhibition free on Member Days: Sunday, December 14, 2025; Thursday, January 1, 2026; Saturday, January 10, 2026; and Saturday, January 17, 2026.
Not a member yet? Learn more and join today.
<a href="https://tickets.artsmia.org/events/b1f97274-08d7-6122-801b-4182fe5d7c54" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><button class="black-background">Explore Membership</button></a>

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Learn about Cambodian history and copper metallurgy, and prepare your students for a visit to the special exhibition.
<a href="https://new.artsmia.org/programs/teachers-and-students/teacher-resources/teachers-guide-royal-bronzes"><button class="black-background">Go to Guide</button></a>

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Discover the story behind one of Cambodia’s greatest treasures: the monumental bronze statue of the Hindu god Vishnu, reclining on the serpent Ananta. This statue, dated from the second half of the 11th century, was first unearthed at Angkor’s West Mebon temple in 1936. But its secrets have remained untold—until recently.
<a href="https://vimeo.com/showcase/2905962?video=1136977395" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><button class="black-background">Watch Video</button></a>

https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/02131157/West-Mebon-Vishnu-re-creation-cropped-scaled.jpg

https://new.artsmia.org/event/curator-talk-west-mebon-vishnu

Learn more about the exhibition. Pierre Baptiste from the Guimet – National Museum of Asian Arts, France highlights masterworks in the show, archaeological discoveries, and scientific breakthroughs that shed new light on bronze production under the Khmer kings.
<a href="https://vimeo.com/showcase/2905962?video=1130987695" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><button class="black-background">Watch Video</button></a>

Cambodian Masterpieces from Phnom Penh and Paris

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https://vimeo.com/showcase/2905962?video=1130987695

Join us for a free public tour of the exhibition and gain deeper insight into the pieces in the exhibition. Note: The tour is free, but you need a ticket to enter the exhibition.
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Family day is a free monthly event for families, filled with hands-on art activities, gallery hunts, and more. Join us to celebrate Cambodian culture with dance performances and a metal stamping workshop.
Sunday, December 14, 2025 
10 a.m.–5 p.m.
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Mia&#8217;s Young Adult Night is for individuals age 18 to 26 who love art, free food, and chill vibes. Enjoy a special evening that includes live music and free access to the exhibition.
Thursday, November 13, 2025 
6–9 p.m.
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Meet at Mia is a free Thursday evening event for adults, filled with live music, art making, and more. Watch traditional Cambodian dance performances, learn about metal casting, and enjoy free access to the exhibition.
Thursday, November 13, 2025 
5–9 p.m.
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https://new.artsmia.org/event/meet-at-mia#nov13

Watch Ragamala Dance Company brings to life the gods and goddesses of Hindu mythology. The performance intertwines music, movement, and poetry rooted in South Indian tradition that resonates across cultures.
Saturday, November 8, 2025 
2–4:30 p.m.
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Ragamala Dance Company Presents Moving Bronzes

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Join us for a special reception to celebrate the exhibition and experience the beauty of Cambodian heritage while connecting with the Minnesota Cambodian community.
Thursday, November 6, 2025 
5–8 p.m.
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Join us for an evening designed just for educators and discover what’s new at Mia. Get a first look at current exhibitions, including free admission to &#8220;Royal Bronzes,&#8221; and discover new classroom-ready learning resources.
Thursday, October 30, 2025 
4:30–6:30 p.m.
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bronze sculpture of a reclining Vishnu showing his face with two arms bent at the elbow

Current Exhibitions

The Weirdening of the Renaissance

Annotations

Remnants

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

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

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

“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