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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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Art Inspires: Poet Alex Lemon, celebrating a new book, on a photograph of life’s terrible beauty
THERE IS HARDLY ANY LIGHT after “Untitled,” 1961, by Ralph Eugene Meatyard Blanket of mud. Blanket of rot, of always, Of cloying. Always, a soaked blanket Knotted around the face. Shallows ruffled By Blackgum, spiderwillows— Their knobbed roots tangled beneath the mucked Skim, leaf-knotted—slick as oysters Jellied ...
We asked an 11-year-old to review the museum's new Half Pint cafe for families. He came, he ate, he wrote.
This winter, the MIA opened a new cafe in the first-floor lobby across from the family center. Called Half Pint, it’s a fresh and creative take on family food from the fun folks at Stock & Badge (Parka, Victory 44). We think it’s pretty sweet, a cool complement to the new Dogwood coffee shop in ...
We asked an 11-year-old to review the museum’s new Half Pint cafe for families. He came, he ate, he wrote.
This winter, the MIA opened a new cafe in the first-floor lobby across from the family center. Called Half Pint, it’s a fresh and creative take on family food from the fun folks at Stock & Badge (Parka, Victory 44). We think it’s pretty sweet, a cool complement to the new Dogwood coffee shop in ...
What happens when a museum goes green?
Conservation is a familiar concept at art museums. We’re serious about caring for the art entrusted to us, and we spend a lot of effort conserving it. But when it comes to sustainability in the larger sense, of our shared resources, we have some tough choices to make. Part of caring for the art means ...
The Oscars, through the lens of art at the MIA
If you’re watching the Academy Awards this Sunday and find your mind wandering—as it likely will over the course of four hours—consider these connections between several of the nominees for Best Picture and artworks from the MIA collection. The movies, after all, trade in established iconography, visual shorthand. (Earlier this year on MIA Stories, John ...
Monuments Men at the MIA: a director, a curator, and a mystery man
In 1942, Richard S. Davis was in Michigan, fresh out of Harvard. The Cranbrook Academy of Art had just opened and Davis (shown above in his office) had become its first curator. As he would later do at the MIA, Davis pushed Cranbrook to collect modern and contemporary art. And then, a little more than ...
Showing your love at the Institute of Hearts
Love was in the air on February 13 and 14 when the Minneapolis Institute of Art once again transformed into the Minneapolis Institute of Hearts. In a nod to Valentine’s Day, museum-goers are offered paper hearts to leave with their favorite works of art. It’s become my favorite event at the museum, as this simple, sweet ...
Homage to Matisse: Shawn McCann channels the master to accent the exhibition
Henri Matisse, the modern master whose colorful, game-changing art goes on view at the MIA on Sunday in Matisse: Masterworks from the Baltimore Museum of Art, is no longer taking commissions. Luckily for the MIA, Shawn McCann is close at hand. By day, he works in facilities maintenance at the museum, clearing snow, fixing leaks, ...
A modern-day monuments woman, once with the MIA, shares stories from the battlefield
Cori Wegener is the rare curator who can break down a rifle as well as the Prairie School’s influence on architecture. She was in the Army Reserves and an assistant curator at the MIA when she was sent to Baghdad after the National Museum of Iraq was looted in 2003 and to Haiti after the ...
Checkmate! What a visitor noticed, prompting a new setup of the Charleston Drawing Room chessboard
He had noticed it for years. And then, after a January visit, for reasons unclear even to him, he was finally moved to say something. “I’m a tournament chess player,” he wrote in an email to the MIA, “and I noticed that the chess set in the Charleston Drawing Room has an unlikely position on ...