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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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Revenge porn’s long and twisted artistic tradition
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 ...
Adventures in Couriering, Part I
“If you turn over a rock, there’s a whole world underneath.” That pretty much sums up the work of a museum courier. Last week, I accompanied our painting by Balthus, The Living Room, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was the last courier to arrive. This is good, because it means that all the ...
Are books the new vanity backdrop?
You’ve heard of selfies, those cell-phone self-portraits full of awkward arm angles and blurry, presumably beautiful backdrops. Now the trend is bookshelfies: posing in front of your book collection to demonstrate your analog intellectualism. Printed books, after all, are now increasingly viewed as rare art objects. And in the age of sharing and curating, people ...
What's the story?
Recently, to celebrate the launch of MIA Stories, our crack social-media team put together a bit of a New Yorker-style caption contest on Twitter and Facebook for a few artworks around here that are just begging for thought bubbles. We got plenty, including at least one haiku. Here, a few of our favorites. Douglas Volk’s ...
What’s the story?
Recently, to celebrate the launch of MIA Stories, our crack social-media team put together a bit of a New Yorker-style caption contest on Twitter and Facebook for a few artworks around here that are just begging for thought bubbles. We got plenty, including at least one haiku. Here, a few of our favorites. Douglas Volk’s ...
NewsFlash: Tokyo's fishmongers on the move
It’s the epicenter of sushi, the slimy storehouse of prized tuna and pie-eyed tourists in Tokyo: the Tsukiji fish market. And it will shortly be moving from its cosmopolitan locale to a climate-controlled distribution center on a manufactured island, according to a story in the New York Times. The world’s largest fish market, Tsukiji occupies ...
NewsFlash: Tokyo’s fishmongers on the move
It’s the epicenter of sushi, the slimy storehouse of prized tuna and pie-eyed tourists in Tokyo: the Tsukiji fish market. And it will shortly be moving from its cosmopolitan locale to a climate-controlled distribution center on a manufactured island, according to a story in the New York Times. The world’s largest fish market, Tsukiji occupies ...
Lucy Michelle, Jay Z, and the Frankfurt Kitchen
Local musical gem Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles will be playing a special concert at the MIA on Thursday, September 26. Regulars on the Twin Cities’ venue circuit, why are they so excited to play at the museum? I asked leading lady Lucy to find out… Katie Hill: What makes performing in the MIA ...
A lavish moment in Latvia, then and again
A colleague and I recently returned from a week in Latvia, a trip made possible thanks to a wonderful benefactor who has invested in MIA staff innovation. And a week hardly makes me an expert on this Baltic nation, almost continuously occupied—by Russians, Germans, Swedes, Soviets—for the better part of 1,000 years. Still, what struck ...
How a museum of failed romance gets to the heart of things
I recently popped in to visit the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, as I’d been intrigued by rave reviews of the museum and the fact that in 2011 it won the Kenneth Hudson European Museum of the Year award for “the most unusual, daring and, perhaps, controversial ...