At Mia, we believe in the “power of art to inspire wonder,” to connect us with something bigger than ourselves. One of the many things that sparked my early fascination with art is how a painting or sculpture could transport me to a different time or place and allow me to see things from another’s  ...

The clouds at Mia are mostly metaphorical—singular forms at the service of the artist rather than any natural phenomena. An array of harmless white puffs, an ominous black mass. It wasn’t until the 19th century that anyone bothered to categorize clouds. Though when a young British meteorologist finally did, in 1803, it was a poet—Göethe—who  ...

Barton Kestle is not dead. He has never been dead. He has no plans to be dead in the near future. At almost 88, he looks terrific: thick mop of white hair, stylish round glasses, all of his own teeth. He does not look like someone who was all but buried in 1954. Oops. Back  ...

On March 19, news broke in the comics community that one of their own had passed, if indeed he had any peers. “As it comes to all of us, the end came for the greatest that ever lived: Bernie Wrightson,” tweeted Guillermo del Toro. Later, he pledged not to tweet for the next 24 hours—a  ...

This week, Mia opened its highly anticipated show “Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters,” about the innovative Hollywood director, his creative process, and the things that inspire him. But what if you’ve never heard of him? What if you stopped thinking about monsters in third grade? What if you could never imagine watching a  ...

This week, Mia opened its highly anticipated show “Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters,” about the innovative Hollywood director, his creative process, and the things that inspire him. But what if you’ve never heard of him? What if you stopped thinking about monsters in third grade? What if you could never imagine watching a  ...

For a visual guy, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has a way with words. During opening weekend for “Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters,” the exhibition at Mia exploring GDT and the origins of creativity, he sat for a Q&A with Mia director Kaywin Feldman and curator Gabe Ritter. He was thoughtful, profane, and hilarious,  ...

For a visual guy, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has a way with words. During opening weekend for “Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters,” the exhibition at Mia exploring GDT and the origins of creativity, he sat for a Q&A with Mia director Kaywin Feldman and curator Gabe Ritter. He was thoughtful, profane, and hilarious,  ...

Whether you’re Buffy or Billy or Paris von Gütersloh (the chap depicted here by Egon Schiele), you’ve probably grown into your name—literally, according to new research. Shown pictures of faces along with a selection of five possible names, people chose the right name 35 percent of the time, a remarkable feat given that random chance would elicit the  ...

I always read the New Yorker on the elliptical torture machine at the gym, mostly to avoid the repugnant boredom of exercise. But I also find that the effect of the endorphins, combined with the great writing in the New Yorker, fires up ideas. I have lots of bad ideas (I can tell they are bad because  ...