Andy Sturdevant, the ubiquitous and distinctly hirsute artist, writer, and man about town, is taking on the mapping of alleyways in Minneapolis. His upcoming MAEP exhibition, “Alley Atlas,” is an open-source blend of urban design and personal history in which Minneapolitans are invited to name alleys based on their experiences of them. In anticipation of  ...

When I was in college, I spent years in a very college quandary: What was my true calling, letters or art? On the one hand, letters: I had felt the call to write from the youngest age, literally—I was the editor of the P.S. 94 kindergarten haiku magazine. (The kindergarten haiku editor morphed into the  ...

The discoverers of the Higgs boson, also known as the God particle, were recently co-awarded a Nobel Prize (at least, two of the researchers were—more than 3,000 worked on the project, including a University of Minnesota physics professor). The Higgs boson, if particle physics papers are not on your bedside table, is believed to enable  ...

The discoverers of the Higgs boson, also known as the God particle, were recently co-awarded a Nobel Prize (at least, two of the researchers were—more than 3,000 worked on the project, including a University of Minnesota physics professor). The Higgs boson, if particle physics papers are not on your bedside table, is believed to enable  ...

I didn’t realize that paintings could be punk rock until I saw the work of Francis Bacon. When I see something like Study for Portrait VI, I get the same sense of menace and terrible beauty that I got when I first heard the Sex Pistols. Bacon’s work is made more menacing and thrilling by  ...

I didn’t realize that paintings could be punk rock until I saw the work of Francis Bacon. When I see something like Study for Portrait VI, I get the same sense of menace and terrible beauty that I got when I first heard the Sex Pistols. Bacon’s work is made more menacing and thrilling by  ...

It sounds like a swarm of bees. It looks like a kid’s toy. It flies like a tipsy seagull. And it draws Bill Clark out of his office and into his almond grove. What’s all that buzzing? Clark, the 80-something collector and benefactor whose prodigious, eclectic taste in Japanese art will debut this weekend at  ...

The animals get a break, while anyone with the misfortune to plan their own breaks in the national parks during the government shutdown will have to avail themselves of Jellystone Parks. Let the great national stress-out begin. To help, we’ve compiled some of the many images of national parks in the MIA collection, several of  ...

They face each other as fellow warriors from different, imaginary wars—or all wars. But one stands with arms akimbo, unarmed, a glittering but empty shell (made of dog tags, as closer inspection reveals). The other stands, if you can call it that, as a beaten, broken, but undaunted warrior, his shield raised to receive yet  ...

This week, with news of California attempting to curb the scourge of “revenge porn” on the Internet, my colleague Diane Richard posted a NewsFlash label beside an MIA painting with scandalous origins: Portrait of Mlle. Lange as Danae, created in 1799 by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson. Seems revenge porn isn’t so new, and you didn’t  ...