The lions guarding the front steps of the MIA have never moved. Never flinched. Never roared. But this week, they bloomed. The duo sprouted floral manes, courtesy of Art and Flowers Design Studio, as the MIA’s latest birthday year surprise. Giant poms of dianthus—some 200 blooms in each ball—loop through the lions’ paws, counterweights to  ...

They could have been playing stickball. Or whittling. Or pushing a hoop around with a branch. Or whatever kids did for fun in the 1920s. But no, they were at the Minneapolis School of Art at the crack of dawn drawing a mini pugilist, dwarfed by the platform he’s perched on yet ready to punch  ...

You can bifurcate American ceramics, like time itself, into two very different halves: before and after Warren Mackenzie. Because a half century ago he turned the medium into art, despite his protests ever since that he’s done nothing of the sort. From his Stillwater studio he would turn out 50 to 200 pots a day.  ...

Let’s assume this was staged. The flood lighting, the dramatic expression—it’s as though the girl had seen a ghost, not a Picasso. The Minneapolis Times-Tribune photographer shooting Harriet Johnson and Donald Knox at the MIA in 1941 had probably asked for a reaction, and got one. But even museums struggled with modern art. “Whether we  ...

When the MIA opened, in 1915, James J. Hill used his time at the podium to admonish the museum not to “pitch the key too low”—to keep a high aesthetic standard. Arguably it has. And recently that bar has extended to the redesigned Store at MIA, reflecting the virtuosity in the galleries with some of  ...

I cried during my first visit to Vienna, in 1988. It happened in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where there are many moving and impactful paintings by artists such as Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, and Caravaggio. It was the Breughel gallery that caused me to weep. It’s a large room, empty save for the walls, which  ...

I cried during my first visit to Vienna, in 1988. It happened in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where there are many moving and impactful paintings by artists such as Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, and Caravaggio. It was the Breughel gallery that caused me to weep. It’s a large room, empty save for the walls, which  ...

It’s now one of the MIA’s most beloved artworks: Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of Scholars at the Lanting Pavilion, carved in 1784. But a hundred years ago the 640-pound sculpture was used as a table centerpiece. You could do this if you were T.B. Walker, this was your table, and you owned the jade mountain. Bon  ...

Mercedes Knapp arrives at the MIA with a serving tray bearing a miniature menagerie. Some of the creatures are identifiable: koi fish, a lion, a sleeping deer. Others are more nebulous, with the rounded, fantastical features of anime. She calls them Puds, colorful little blobs that resemble nothing so much as gumdrops. She’s been making the cuddly creatures  ...

Mercedes Knapp arrives at the MIA with a serving tray bearing a miniature menagerie. Some of the creatures are identifiable: koi fish, a lion, a sleeping deer. Others are more nebulous, with the rounded, fantastical features of anime. She calls them Puds, colorful little blobs that resemble nothing so much as gumdrops. She’s been making the cuddly creatures  ...