New Accessions at Mia

By Katie Luber

June 27, 2025—The Board’s Accessions Committee met on June 10, approving the addition of 79 new objects to Mia’s collection. Here are four highlights coming soon to Mia’s galleries.

Snow Country Road, Le Val near Giverny

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

Although the painting was not accepted at the Salon that spring, it marks a new direction in her art. She 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 at right is especially lively and carefully worked, with layers of white, purple, and blue forming the shadows of the naked apple trees.

Virgen de Guadalupe

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

Here, she is depicted as a dark-skinned young woman, wearing a light-pink tunic and a star-covered blue mantle. With 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 in red, green, and white—the colors of the Mexican flag. Blending elements from these 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 from a short-lived period in ceremonial tea gatherings when practitioners vied with each other to push novelty to the limit. This so-called clog-shaped bowl corresponds to what contemporaries described as the warped (hizumitaru) aesthetic of Furuta Oribe (1544–1615), a distinguished tea master and samurai who played a pivotal role in the evolution of tea culture.

The contours of the bowl are triangular instead of round, a deliberate choice made to appear random. The decoration of wisteria, 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: the 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

Originally from Venezuela but based in Paris for most of his life, Jesús Rafael Soto is recognized as 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 belongs to Soto’s “Écriture” (Writings) 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 position in front of the work, creating a dynamic effect over the viewer’s perception, one that blurs the boundaries of reality through optical illusion.