Before Doryphoros, before Mia’s grand 24th Street entrance closed for a time, the museum’s rotunda was occupied by a warrior: The Fighter of the Spirit. Ernst Barlach’s sculpture of an angel defeating what may be the so-called wolf of materialism or greed became a pacifist symbol when it was created in 1928, in the wake of  ...

Elizabeth Catlett was the granddaughter of former slaves. She focused her art, a mix of sculpture, painting, and prints, on the struggle for civil rights and the female African-American experience. She was a teacher at first, before World War II, when opportunities for women artists, much less African-American women, were almost non-existent. It was a trip to  ...

Lace was a luxury in the 1600s, sometimes formed with metallic threads of gold and silver—you could literally wear your wealth on your sleeve. Women made all of it. Young women, usually, even girls. The work required so much focus, squinting in dim candlelight, that failing eyesight was an occupational hazard. Lacemaking was not a  ...

Check mate. With those words, artists Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst struck up a 34-year relationship over a game of chess in Tanning’s New York City studio. A self-portrait, Birthday, had caught Ernst’s eye. It shows her in a hallway full of open doors, her blouse open, revealing her chest, winged chimera squatting on the floor  ...

“I can’t tell you how to be a mom,” said Andy DuCett. It was the Saturday before Valentine’s Day, a few days before the “State of the Art” exhibition opened at Mia, featuring DuCett’s Mom Booth. And DuCett needed some volunteers—he needed some moms. DuCett, based in Minneapolis, has become a regular contributor to Mia’s  ...

“I WARN YOU, I REFUSE TO BE AN OBJECT.” Those words greet visitors to the Leonora Carrington Foundation website. Rebellious and strident, Carrington forged a remarkable artistic career in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Keen on the work of the surrealists, she was 20 when she met German artist Max Ernst at  ...

The god arrived in 1917 with unusual restraint. Boxed, braced, on a bed of what looks like shavings or straw. The Minneapolis Institute of Art had been open only a couple of years. The ancient black marble statue, representing the popular incarnation of Buddha variously known as Guanyin, Kuan-yin, or Avalokitesvara, was one of the museum’s first  ...

It wasn’t a promising call: “My stepfather liked to draw and I’m looking for a museum to house his work.” Rarely has Tom Rassieur, Mia’s John E. Andrus III Curator of Prints and Drawings, taken such a call and the artwork waiting at the other end of the line. Never, in fact. Not until Jim Hogan drove to the  ...

“State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now” opened February 18 at Mia and features dozens of living artists from across America. Three are from Minnesota: Andy DuCett, Chris Larson, and Cameron Gainer. A small fraction, the exhibition’s curators acknowledge, of the art being made all around us. “There likely have never been more artists at work,” they note  ...

It was early November in 1936 when Elizabeth Carney, the young woman on the right, gave a lecture at Mia on the Spanish Civil War. She was a student at the Minneapolis School of Art, then housed on the museum campus—she’s talking to the wife of the school director. She had been studying in Spain that  ...