Robert Wilson is not known for his words. His early theatrical masterpiece “Einstein on the Beach,” created with Philip Glass, is five hours long and has almost no real dialogue. His first major theater works, in the 1960s and ’70s, were completely silent. Last week, he gave a sold-out talk with Mia director Kaywin Feldman and  ...

The history of human existence is also the history of infectious disease. The plague killed 25 to 50 percent of Europe’s population in just a few years in the 1300s. The flu, which we contend with every winter, killed up to a fifth of the global population between 1918 and 1920. This year’s flu season  ...

On Super Bowl Sunday, we should all be so lucky to imbibe from a punch bowl like this one—a super bowl indeed. It has been called one of the world’s greatest rarities (by the silver dealer who bought it in 1961 at a world-record price and sold it to Mia that same year) and arguably the finest piece of English silver in the  ...

I need to come clean: I am not a sports fan. That knock on art people being like cats around water on game day? Guilty as charged. I’m happier in the galleries at Mia any day. But when the Super Bowl announced an effort to recruit 10,000 volunteers to help greet and guide the one  ...

Egypt’s mummies were intended to rest in peace for eternity, slumbering beneath the sand or high up in pyramids. But most were dug up almost immediately. Robbed of their valuables and their serenity. Dragged into darkened British parlors to be unwrapped for entertainment. Burned as train fuel. But they’ve been slow to give up their secrets,  ...

Robert Wilson met Philip Glass, the avant-garde composer, in 1973, after Glass attended a show by Wilson—The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin—that was 12 hours long and almost completely silent. Glass loved it. And the two men, retreating to Wilson’s Manhattan studio after the performance, decided they would meet every week for lunch. Within a few months, as they  ...

Lisa Yankton, a Minneapolis-based poet and member of the Spirit Lake Dakota, was inspired by Mia’s statue of Avalokiteshvara, or Guanyin in Chinese, a Buddhist deity associated with mercy and compassion. It is on display in the Buddhist sculpture court (gallery G200). Avalokitesvara, “One Who Hears the Cries of the World” Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara Guanshiyin Guanyin Goddess of  ...

Wildfires in Los Angeles. Hurricanes and flooding in Houston. Earthquakes in Mexico City. With the frequency of natural disasters seemingly on the rise, planning for them is increasingly important as well. So where does that leave museums, whose mission, in part, is to protect the world’s great treasures? Like other institutions, museums test their emergency plans and have close  ...

In the late 1500s, an ancient pagan Roman sculpture of someone or something lost to memory—a philosopher, perhaps, or a god—was transformed into St. Peter, a more agreeable figure in Catholic Rome. To pull this off, the sculptor added a head, hands, and feet—quite obvious in gilt bronze—and a throne for St. Peter to sit on. For centuries,  ...

Is all the pressure to buy, buy, buy during the winter holidays—early in the morning, late at night, 24/7 on the internet—turning you into the Grinch? Would you rather craft your own gifts than touch the latest plastic gewgaws with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole? Would you rather just send a card? You would’ve made a fine Spug—a  ...