Mia’s new podcast, The Object, began this spring with a fairly simple premise. Tell the curious, incredible, sometimes heartbreaking stories behind the people and objects that have made the museum what it is today. Only it’s not so simple. In telling the stories of objects, artists, and collectors, the museum emerges at the center of some  ...

Language matters. More than two years ago, when Mia was planning the exhibition “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” we wrote grants that said we would translate the labels for the artworks in the exhibition into a Native language. The exhibition includes the art of more than 115 Native women, from the past 1,000 years—it’s the first major  ...

After decades of decline, empathy—or the desire for it, at least—is suddenly everywhere. From corporate culture to academia, the urge to instill empathy in a world divided, unequal, and burdened by conflict has become, well, urgent. The University of California, San Diego, plans to create a Center for Empathy in consultation with the Dalai Lama. And  ...

Our tour group is standing in Mia’s African Art galleries facing a terracotta head. It’s from Nigeria and depicts a woman’s face, placid and peaceful, the creases in her neck suggestive of fatty tissue—a sign of wealth and prosperity. It was likely made to memorialize someone who died. But our tour guide does not linger  ...

By Teri Greeves When “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists” opens at Mia on June 2, it will be the largest exhibition of work by Native women artists ever assembled. It features objects made by 115 artists over a thousand years. It was a long time coming. I am the co-curator of the exhibition,  ...

When Rose Boyd died, in 1917, Louise Weyerhauser noted the date in her diary. Weyerhauser was the daughter-in-law of a Minnesota timber baron. Boyd had been one of the high-end dressmakers she hired to design her clothes, for traveling or for balls or for just being seen around town—a fresh wardrobe every year. Boyd had  ...

On May 9, Claudia Rankine spoke at Mia at an event co-presented by the Mark and Mary Goff Fiterman Lecture Fund and the museum’s Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts. Rankine is a professor of poetry at Yale University, in both the English and African American Studies departments. Her work includes the best-selling collection  ...

Although they cover only a small fraction of the earth’s surface, rainforests host more than half of all the world’s animals and plants. They have been given many poetic names, including “the jewels of the earth” on account of their value and beauty, “the lungs of the earth” due to their crucial role in oxygen  ...

This is the final weekend to see “Egypt’s Sunken Cities” at Mia, an exploration of ancient Egyptian art and beliefs unprecedented in recent decades. But Egypt didn’t cease to exist when its ancient religion did, of course—its modern history is no less fascinating and complicated. So here are 10 book suggestions from Shaden Tageldin, an  ...

In 1976, the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, welcomed spring into the galleries by pairing art and flowers. The museum was struggling to pay for increased operating costs, and imposing new admission charges had significantly depressed attendance. So the MFA’s membership director had approached the Ladies Committee (now the MFA Associates) with the idea  ...