This Just In: Mia’s Latest Accessions

June 27, 2025—Mia continually enhances and diversifies the collection with the addition of new artworks every year. Accessions, we call them. On June 10, the Board’s Accessions Committee approved 79 objects that will find a new home in Mia’s collection. Here are four highlights, soon to be on view in the galleries.

Snow Country Road, Le Val near Giverny

Blanche Hoschedé-Monet began painting at the age of 18 alongside Claude Monet, her stepfather and eventual father-in-law. His only actual pupil, she learned to paint by observing his techniques firsthand. In January 1888, Monet traveled to Antibes, leaving Hoschedé-Monet behind to work on this painting (above), her first Salon submission.

Although the work wasn’t accepted at the Salon that spring, it marked a new artistic direction for Hoschedé-Monet. The artist balances bold white impasto with shadows of blue, gray, and green, injecting subtle warmth with touches of pink and yellow. The slope of the hill on the right is especially lively and carefully worked, with delicate layers of white, purple, and blue forming the shadows of the naked apple trees.

Virgen de Guadalupe

A widely recognized religious image in the Americas, the Virgin of Guadalupe is an enduring symbol that continues to resonate deeply in the popular imagination.

Here, she’s depicted as a young woman wearing a light-pink tunic and a star-covered blue mantle. Hands folded in prayer, she stands on a crescent moon—a reference to the Immaculate Conception—and is supported by an angel whose wings are colored the red, green, and white of the Mexican flag. Blending elements from traditional representations of the Virgin Mary, the Guadalupe is regarded as an original creation of the Americas.

Clog-Shaped Tea Bowl with Wisteria Motif

This “deformed” tea bowl dates back to a short-lived period in Japanese ceremonial tea gatherings when practitioners vied with one another to push the limits of novelty. The so-called clog-shaped bowl corresponds to what contemporaries described as hizumitaru, the warped aesthetic of Furuta Oribe (1544–1615), a distinguished tea master and samurai who played a pivotal role in the evolution of Japanese tea culture.

The contours of the bowl are triangular instead of round, a deliberate choice made to appear random. The wisteria motif, traditionally associated with early summer, may indicate that the bowl was created or commissioned for use during that season.

The bowl’s decoration was achieved through a meticulous process: applied black glaze was selectively scraped away, and the exposed areas were then filled with white clay slip. This technique required exceptional precision, as each individual motif had to be filled separately with a translucent glaze rather than being coated uniformly.

Écriture Fine

Venezuela-born, Paris-based Jesús Rafael Soto is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, particularly for his pioneering role in kinetic art—an artistic movement centered on works that incorporate real movement or create the illusion of motion.

This work blurs the boundaries of reality through optical illusion. It belongs to Soto’s “Écriture” (Writing) series, which he began in the mid-1960s. Inspired by musical scores, the series explores the interplay between visual rhythm and spatial illusion, contrasting a rigid sequence of black and white stripes with fluid, curved forms that resemble drawings suspended in space.

These elements appear to float and transform as the viewer shifts their position relative to the work, with a dizzying, dynamic effect on their perception.

Explore Mia’s Collection

Home to more than 100,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia inspires wonder, spurs creativity, and nourishes the imagination. With extraordinary exhibitions and one of the finest art collections in the country—from all corners of the globe, from ancient to contemporary—Mia links the past to the present, enables global conversations, and offers an exceptional setting for inspiration. Browse the collection.