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Fresh perspectives on art, life, and current events. From deep dives to quick takes to insightful interviews, it’s the museum in conversation. Beyond the walls. Outside the frame. Around the world.
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Once at Mia: Collection in Focus
In 1998, Mia hosted a special exhibition of paintings by Jacob Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight. Diane Levy, who supervised the museum’s tours at the time, and Josie Johnson, a trustee, saw an opportunity. It had been clear for several years that the long and demanding process of becoming a docent, to lead tours ...
Once at Mia: The educators
They were poets, artists, and teachers and would go on to become architects, arts administrators, and management consultants. But at this moment, in the early 1970s, they were educators, charged with illuminating the mysteries of fine art. It’s a tradition of talks, classes, and school visits that has been around as long as Mia itself. The first bridge between ...
A museum by any other name: The many monikers of Mia
Since the museum announced last week that it would now be known as the Minneapolis Institute of Art (singular), Mia for short, some people have sworn they will continue to call it the MIA. Or the Institute. Or some variation thereof. Some said they’d been calling it Mia all along. A name, in other words, ...
Once at Mia: What's in a name?
This week, the museum announced a refreshing of its name—two names, actually: Mia (pronounced Mee-ah), replacing the acronym MIA, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, instead of Arts. These may seem like small changes to reflect contemporary language, but in deeper ways they reconnect the museum with its 100-year-old roots. The founders believed that museums ...
Once at Mia: What’s in a name?
This week, the museum announced a refreshing of its name—two names, actually: Mia (pronounced Mee-ah), replacing the acronym MIA, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, instead of Arts. These may seem like small changes to reflect contemporary language, but in deeper ways they reconnect the museum with its 100-year-old roots. The founders believed that museums ...
Once at Mia: A second centennial?
If the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s (Mia’s) 100th anniversary celebration feels familiar, it’s probably not because you were around for the 1915 party. But you might remember the 1983 Centennial Celebration, when the museum sunk a time capsule into its front steps. The museums’s building was not yet a hundred years old then, but the Mia’s ...
Once at MIA: War and peace
Nothing small was ever going to be performed on the steps of the MIA, the neoclassical columns perfect for tales of Samson and Delilah, gods and their oracles. In July 1919, it was Swords and Plowshares, an epic morality play about war and peace, that was staged out front by the Civic Players of Minneapolis, ...
Once at MIA: Behind the scenes in broad daylight
June 14, 1969, seems to have been a warm, sunny day in Minneapolis. Which was lucky, given that the MIA chose to uncrate Rosa Bonheur’s Horse Fair, perhaps her most famous painting, outside the museum. It’s not the usual protocol—then or now. But what a wonderfully strange insider experience for the gentleman and young boy ...
Tales from the script: Secrets in the MIA’s collection
If your Italian fails you while trying to read Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester, on display through August 30 at the MIA, it’s not you. Leonardo created his notebook with mirror writing, transcribing his sentences backward and right to left. Yet recognizing the trick behind Leonardo’s coded script requires only the slightest Sherlockian effort compared ...
Once at MIA: Avedon sits in
By Dan Dennehy, senior photographer and head of Visual Resources at Mia It looks innocent enough: Richard Avedon, the celebrated New York fashion photographer, sitting cross-legged on the gallery floor surrounded by young admirers. But something tells me they are not talking f/stops and Tri-X. It is, after all, the summer of 1970. The counter-culture ...