In 2004, Bruce Dayton helped Mia purchase a gate in China. The businessman and longtime Mia benefactor had done this before, in the late 1990s, when he and his wife bought a heavily carved, nearly 300-year-old ceremonial gate, along with a reception hall and a scholar’s study, on their way to making Mia’s Chinese galleries among the finest in the world.  ...

In 2004, Bruce Dayton helped Mia purchase a gate in China. The businessman and longtime Mia benefactor had done this before, in the late 1990s, when he and his wife bought a heavily carved, nearly 300-year-old ceremonial gate, along with a reception hall and a scholar’s study, on their way to making Mia’s Chinese galleries among the finest in the world.  ...

Since 2013, Mia has hosted several colonies of European honeybees on its roof, a striking if largely unseen part of its mission to preserve the planet and its treasures. But recently it became clear that merely hosting the bees was not enough if the museum wants to help bees. Providing bee-friendly flowers is the best way to support  ...

In 1931, the Minneapolis Institute of Art received a pair of rooms from the 1772 home of John Stuart, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs in colonial Charleston, South Carolina. The Charleston Dining and Drawing Rooms, as they’re now known, are among the museum’s many period rooms, historic interiors that were disassembled in their original  ...

Game of Thrones, HBO’s most popular television show, premieres its seventh season on July 16. After watching the series for six seasons, I’ve become more and more intrigued by the resemblance between the televised drama inspired by George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels and a set of woodcuts by the Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). Issued in  ...

Game of Thrones, HBO’s most popular television show, premieres its seventh season on July 16. After watching the series for six seasons, I’ve become more and more intrigued by the resemblance between the televised drama inspired by George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels and a set of woodcuts by the Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). Issued in  ...

One of my jobs at Mia is working with curators to make labels about art that are as accessible and inclusive as possible. To that end, I avoid using the term “American” as a synonym for someone who lives in the United States or is a U.S. citizen. Why? Because the United States of America is only  ...

Shortly after my daughter was born, two years ago, I was asked by the Star Tribune to write about the experience of being a first-time father. A weekly chronicle of transformation, discovery, and one-sided battles with the diaper genie. Pepin, almost as soon as she left the hospital, became part of my work. It wasn’t  ...

Shortly after my daughter was born, two years ago, I was asked by the Star Tribune to write about the experience of being a first-time father. A weekly chronicle of transformation, discovery, and one-sided battles with the diaper genie. Pepin, almost as soon as she left the hospital, became part of my work. It wasn’t  ...

Tygra was Tristan at first—a “Marine brat,” she says, growing up in Scottsdale, Arizona. She went to college in Omaha, Nebraska, where she studied nursing. And there, one night in a bar, she saw a drag performance. “I was 20, not even old enough to be in a bar, slowly coming out as a gay boy,” she says. This  ...