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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: The art of partying
We don’t know what these arty partiers, these ’80s-era swells, were imbibing at the MIA—or why. These days, there needn’t be an occasion: the MIA sells beer and wine in its restaurants; happy hour begins at 2:30 p.m. But for a long time there wasn’t any alcohol at the MIA, and there wasn’t supposed to ...
Once at MIA: Teens Across Time
Be still my heart. Isn’t he just a dreamboat? The S.S. Studly Do-Right! Why, he could just come over with that dog of his for colas anytime! Well, who knows what the girls were really smiling about. This was 1933, after all, and the boy has longer hair than they do, kind of a British ...
Once at MIA: At home in the galleries
It looks a little thrown together now, its glamour a little dated, like exhibition design by Norma Desmond—Dahling, you must see my bronzes. Ferns droop here and there. Sculptures balance on radiator covers and faux classical pedestals of the sort you might find today in a garden, propping up a birdbath. All that’s missing is a ...
Once at MIA: Rauschenberg at Rest
Robert Rauschenberg, on the right, always played it cool. “Screwing up things is a virtue,” he said. He found beauty where others flinched. “I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must ...
Touché across time: Announcing the winners of our archive photo caption contest!
You don’t get to 1oo years old without a good sense of humor. So at our #BDayMIA Third Thursday last night, we asked visitors for captions to four historic images of the museum from our archives. And they delivered. Here are the winning captions, along with the photos that inspired them. And for (slightly) more serious discussions ...
Charlie Hebdo and the French art of satire
It wasn’t long after gunmen slaughtered the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, and supporters of free speech around the world rose to support the French satirical magazine, that an uneasiness seeped into the discussion. Those cartoons of the prophet Muhammad: goggle-eyed, beak-nosed, stereotypically turbaned. Charlie may be many things—irreverent, irrepressible—but it is certainly not subtle. ...
Once at MIA: Candid camera
He was photographing the MIA galleries, but he was almost certainly the best subject in them that day. This was 1937, and the young man—looking like he walked off the Hollywood set of a Yukon musical—was an early adopter of small, handheld cameras, what were then called “candid cameras.” Today, the MIA allows photography in most ...
Once at MIA: Opening a temple to art
At 3 p.m. on the afternoon of January 7, 1915, the pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis sent up a prayer: “Accept now, we beseech thee, our father in heaven, under thy gracious favor, the fair temple which we today dedicate to thy name for the ennobling purposes of art.” May God, he ...
Once at MIA: Two letters that built a museum
The MIA began with two letters. One proferred the land, the other the starter money. And within four years, the whole thing was built. On January 3, 1911, Clinton Morrison wrote a letter to the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, explaining his ideas for how the proposed art museum should be situated in the city. ...
Art Inspires: James Norton on the domestic trials of Merope
Merope, one of the seven sisters known as the Pleiades, is depicted in a statue at the MIA as a woman searching, casting about for the family that deserted her for the act of marrying a mortal, Sisyphus. One can only imagine the trauma of that separation. Thus: Merope Calls Home to Sort Out Her ...