I came home recently to find, on the rocking chair that sits by our mail box, a large envelope enclosing Master Drawings from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the gorgeous and insightful catalogue accompanying the “Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings” exhibition currently on view. The MIA’s drawing collection includes everything from “…an artist’s sketch that  ...

Later in life, Édouard Vuillard was in great demand as a portraitist among the Parisian elite. We can imagine he sketched the wonderfully ad hoc bouquet in “Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings,” now on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, in some industrialist’s luxurious villa, between sittings. Locally, the artist old Minneapolis families  ...

Gustave Caillebotte was sleeping with this woman. And the artist, a married man, got quite the scolding from 1880s Paris upon showing this painting of her, his infamous “Nude on a Couch” (now in the MIA’s collection)—not because he was sleeping with her, of course, but because she didn’t appear particularly ashamed of her sexuality  ...

We hurtled down the steep mountain, leaving behind thousand-year-old temples and the pungent sulfur springs of the verdant Dieng Plateau. It was a long drive, and when we reached the city of Yogyakarta (Jogja) it was already late afternoon. Just in time for rush hour—urban Indonesia at its frenetic finest. This marked a new stage  ...

The new release from Dogwood Coffee hails from the farm of Nodier Andrade in Colombia. Dogwood Coffee, based in Minneapolis, has been hailed as one of America’s finest artisanal coffee companies. Late last year it opened its second retail location—in the MIA lobby. The partnership between a museum and a coffee company makes sense as  ...

The new release from Dogwood Coffee hails from the farm of Nodier Andrade in Colombia. Dogwood Coffee, based in Minneapolis, has been hailed as one of America’s finest artisanal coffee companies. Late last year it opened its second retail location—in the MIA lobby. The partnership between a museum and a coffee company makes sense as  ...

It was difficult to pick just one piece from “Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings from the Minneapolis Institute of Art” to write about. In the end, I settled on Grant Wood’s Sentimental Yearner. One of nine commissioned illustrations (two townscapes, seven characterizations) for a limited edition of Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, this work is  ...

Are we all connected? If so, are we smart enough to understand why? These are some of the big questions of science that Eric William Carroll constantly explores—despite his knowledge being limited to what he learned in high school science class. The Minneapolis-based artist (who also teaches at Macalester College) channels his curiosity about the  ...

This week, while installing the MIA’s summer exhibition Marks of Genius: 100 Extraordinary Drawings—a show that spans nearly 600 years of drawing—I’ve been thinking about the origins of the medium. Its beginnings, like the beginnings of art, are murky, mythical, and lost. According to the ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder, both the Egyptians and  ...

Soccer buffs abound in the Twin Cities during the heat of the FIFA World Cup. But how many know about where soccer all began? These MIA pieces (all on view in the Robert and Carolyn Nelson Gallery) show the ancient game that evolved into the modern sport everyone is talking about.  1. Figure   This  ...