Blog
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.
The Latest
The secret history of sacrifice and survival behind Pao Her’s “Attention”
Some of the men in the portraits stand straight, their eyes alert. The medals decorating their freshly pressed uniforms shine under the studio lighting. Others seem disinterested in pageantry and pride, their ill-fitted military fatigues hardly adorned at all. One man brandishes an excessive number of medals and ribbons on the pocket over his heart. ...
Once at MIA: The ladies and the lecturer
His smile says he knows how this looks. All those years of studying, squinting at dusty texts, the asthma. And now the payoff: after his 1936 lecture on “oriental architecture” at the MIA, three lovely ladies seeking his attention. Walter Agard was the lucky lecturer. He was a professor of classics at the University of ...
Art Inspires: Tom Weber on the Frank Lloyd Wright Hallway
Something has always been off. I grew up near Chicago, where the Art Institute is an institution. I’ve lived in St. Louis, where the St. Louis Art Museum is a beloved part of the even more beloved Forest Park. I’ve stood in line for the Louvre (and still had time to explore it). Yet my memories are rarely ...
A life in photos: MIA visitors share their #tbt images
The images in the current exhibition “100+: A Photograph for Every Year of the MIA.” drawn from the museum’s collection, chronicle the century since the MIA was founded. Visitors were invited to share their own photographs and the stories behind them. Here are a few of these #tbt submissions, flashbacks to meaningful moments in their ...
Once at MIA: Vikings pride
A lot of people didn’t think this ship would float. The Hjemkomst was built on the prairie, for one thing, in northwest Minnesota, far from any ocean or even a respectable lake. In fact, it was built in a former potato warehouse in Hawley, near Moorhead, by a junior-high guidance counselor named Bob Asp. It took ...
Once at MIA: Art on the move
In 1967, a semi-tractor trailer was loaded with a curated, museum-quality exhibition and sent out on the highways and byways of Minnesota. Occasionally, it would return to port, refill with art, and hit the blacktop again. Its 1968–69 exhibition of early American painters made 48 stops across the state, including the Red Lake Indian Reservation and Stillwater State ...
How old are they? A new website guesses the ages of famous faces in our collection—with revealing results
This past week, everyone’s favorite online distraction has been How-old.net, which quickly guesses the age and gender of people in images you submit. It was created by Microsoft engineers to showcase the algorithms they’ve built, like face detection software. But it raises at least as many questions about our expectations of aging and gender, and ...
A Mother's Day tribute from "The Habsburgs": The story of Maria Theresa, Europe's mother-in-law
She was a “lean in” kind of woman. Mother of 16 children and ruler of most of Europe. And if she didn’t exactly have to fight for everything she got, Maria Theresa did have to fight to keep it. A portrait of Maria Theresa as a 10-year-old girl, in 1727, hangs in “The Habsburgs: Rarely Seen Masterpieces from Europe’s ...
A Mother’s Day tribute from “The Habsburgs”: The story of Maria Theresa, Europe’s mother-in-law
She was a “lean in” kind of woman. Mother of 16 children and ruler of most of Europe. And if she didn’t exactly have to fight for everything she got, Maria Theresa did have to fight to keep it. A portrait of Maria Theresa as a 10-year-old girl, in 1727, hangs in “The Habsburgs: Rarely Seen Masterpieces from Europe’s ...
Once at MIA: Wrestling with Depression
“In troubled times such as these,” the MIA lamented in 1931, “there is a tendency to discard, as unnecessary luxuries, many things which seem essential to life in prosperous days. Interest in books and music and art is packed away with the party dress.” The Great Depression was on, though it wasn’t clear how long ...