February 5, 2026
Minneapolis—The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) has acquired a significant group of works, ranging from early medieval South Asia to contemporary American photography, which continues to build and strengthen its holdings across an array of collecting areas. These include a rare pair of 17th-century Italian still lifes by Agostino Verrocchi; a painting by the 20th-century American artist William H. Johnson; a major print by American artist Kiki Smith; a rare, early 20th-century German Expressionist etching by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; an Edo-period Japanese Kagura robe with an intricate spider design; an imperial Qing-dynasty portrait of the Tibetan Buddhist leader Rolpai Dorje; an early medieval sandstone head of Brahma; and a group of 196 photographs by Paul Shambroom, gifted by the Minneapolis-based artist and capturing the arc of his career.
“These works expand the collection in ways that are both deeply scholarly and will benefit our visitors,” said Katie Luber, Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President of Mia. “Of particular note to me are the Verrocchi works, which address a long-standing gap in our Italian paintings collection and encourage us to rethink the history of the still life tradition beyond the Netherlands and Spain. Likewise, Paul Shambroom’s generous gift of his works to the museum provides an unparalleled visual record of how power and civic life are staged in the United States, from an artist who has made capturing such scenes his project for many decades. I want to thank all of the generous donors, present and past, whose contributions to the museum have served to elevate Mia’s important and compelling collections.”
Still Life with Fruit: Allegory of Summer and Still Life with Fruit: Allegory of Fall, c. 1630, Agostino Verrocchi (Italian, 1586–1659)
This impressive pair of large-scale still-life paintings, made in Rome around 1630, are allegorical representations of summer and autumn and are among the finest surviving works by Agostino Verrocchi. Long overlooked (along with much of the Italian still-life tradition), the history of Verrocchi’s work has only recently been reconstructed through modern scholarship, following the mid-20th-century reassessment of Italian still life initiated by Roberto Longhi. Executed at the height of the genre’s popularity in 17th-century Rome, these paintings reflect a moment when still life had become a fashionable—and intellectually charged—subject, filling the homes of elite families with displays of abundance, virtuosity, and meaning. Verrocchi was a leading specialist within this milieu, working in a Caravaggesque idiom that emphasized stark lighting, shallow space, and uncompromising naturalism.
Both paintings directly engage the legacy of Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit (c. 1600), echoing its wicker basket and fruits that spill into the viewer’s space. Subtle details—wilting leaves, insects emerging from shadow, slugs and butterflies barely visible against the dark ground—remind viewers of decay and transience amid nature’s bounty. These works date from Verrocchi’s mature period, when his technical command of form, light, and surface came together in compositions of exceptional richness and clarity. Together, the pair are an excellent example of Roman still life painting—and a rare opportunity to represent both Italian still life and Caravaggesque painting at a high level within Mia’s European collections.
Selection of 196 photographs by Paul Shambroom (American, b. 1956)
This significant group of photographs, gifted to Mia by Paul Shambroom, represents the depth and consistency of this artist, whose career has been devoted to examining how power operates in American life. Working primarily with large-format cameras, Shambroom has spent decades gaining access to spaces where authority is exercised but rarely visualized—from nuclear weapons facilities and defense infrastructure to municipal meeting rooms, zoning hearings, and unremarkable civic interiors. His photographs are deliberately restrained and precise, allowing architecture, furnishings, signage, and spatial arrangement to stand in for human drama, and revealing how systems of governance are embedded in the built environment.
A graduate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Shambroom is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the Creative Capital Foundation; he is Professor Emeritus in Art at the University of Minnesota. Neither overtly polemical nor purely documentary, Shambroom’s work occupies a distinctive position in contemporary photography, combining conceptual rigor with visual clarity to expose the rituals, symbols, and banality of democratic power.
Pool of Tears II (after Lewis Carroll), 2000, Kiki Smith (American, b. 1954 in Germany)
Pool of Tears II (after Lewis Carroll) is a large-scale, hand-colored intaglio print produced in 2000 by Kiki Smith in collaboration with Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) and is widely regarded as a touchstone of the artist’s printmaking practice. Based on Lewis Carroll’s manuscript drawings for Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (1864), the image depicts Alice—reduced to the size of a mouse—swimming through a pool of her own tears, surrounded by animals and birds swept into the scene and led toward safety through her resolve.
To realize the work, Smith used the largest copper plate ULAE’s press could accommodate, drawing freehand with an etching needle to produce near life-size figures and deliberately preserving incidental scratches and marks made during the process. The resulting print unites technical virtuosity with narrative and autobiographical resonance, capturing Smith’s sustained engagement with the body, vulnerability, and the transition from childhood innocence to experience through a reimagined literary moment.
Untitled (Kerteminde), c. 1930–35, William H. Johnson (American, 1901–1970)
Painted during William H. Johnson’s first extended stay in Denmark, Untitled (Kerteminde) exemplifies a pivotal moment in the artist’s development, as his engagement with European modernism catalyzed a new approach to his landscapes. Born in Florence, South Carolina, Johnson trained at the National Academy of Design in New York. With his teacher Charles Hawthorne’s encouragement, he traveled to Europe, including a formative visit to the Paris studio of Henry Ossawa Tanner. After working in southern France, Johnson settled with his wife, Danish artist Holcha Krake, in the Danish coastal town of Kerteminde, where he produced a series of landscapes marked by vivid color, emphatic line, and dynamic surface. This seascape, depicting the Kerteminde coast, reflects Johnson’s close observation of the surrounding town and shoreline while demonstrating how European expressionism served as both an influence and a springboard for his evolving visual language.
Untitled (Kerteminde) represents a significant acquisition for Mia’s holdings of American modernism and African American art. Created several years before Johnson’s return to New York and his influential role at the Harlem Community Art Center, the painting underscores the importance of expatriate networks for African American artists in the early 20th century. Among Johnson’s surviving landscapes, the work stands out for its strong coloristic structure, richly textured impasto, and exceptional state of preservation—particularly notable given the artist’s frequent use of unconventional materials.
Outer robe (uchikake) for the Kagura dance Tsuchigumo (Earth Spider), Japan, Edo period (1603–1868)
This rare uchikake was worn in Kagura performances of Tsuchigumo (Earth Spider), a drama rooted in medieval Japanese legend that recounts the defeat of a demonic spider preying upon a warrior. While the tale circulated widely in literary and theatrical forms, Kagura—a regional tradition of song and dance associated with Shinto ritual—developed its own vivid visual language to convey transformation, disguise, and revelation. In these performances, the spider often appears in human form as the maid Kochō, only later revealing its monstrous identity. Executed in black silk satin, the robe is dominated on the back by an imposing gold-and-silver embroidered spider, its legs stretched across radiating webs rendered in metallic thread, with exaggerated glass eyes and fangs heightening its supernatural presence.
This robe was acquired from a shrine in Japan’s Chūgoku region, an area renowned for Kagura costumes distinguished by dense embroidery worked in gold thread, and reflects the heightened theatricality required for shrine-based performance before large audiences. Kagura costumes are exceptionally scarce, and garments featuring such a bold spider iconography are rarer still. This uchikake will substantially deepen Mia’s holdings of Japanese performance textiles, complementing its Noh robes while extending the collection into Kagura and Kabuki traditions.
Portrait of Rolpai Dorje, Third Changkya Huthugthu, China, late 18th century
This gilt-bronze portrait depicts Rolpai Dorje (1717–1786), the most influential Tibetan Buddhist leader at the Qing court, and was almost certainly produced in an imperial Beijing workshop under the patronage of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1735–1796). Cast using the lost-wax process and finished with fire gilding, the sculpture displays refined modeling, crisp engraved textile patterns, punched ornamentation, and traces of its original painted colors.
Rolpai Dorje is shown seated on a stepped throne, his right hand raised in vitarka mudra and his left holding a Tibetan pothi manuscript, emphasizing his authority as a scholar, translator, and imperial preceptor; the distinctive folded Huthugthu hat further signals his lineage and status within Mongolian and Tibetan reincarnation traditions. Unusually individualized facial features—rounded cheeks, parted lips, and a composed, direct gaze—mark the work as intentional portraiture rather than a generic monastic image, underscoring Rolpai Dorje’s exceptional standing at court. The sculpture exemplifies the artistic synthesis of cultures and styles fostered by Qing patronage and embodies the intertwined religious, political, and diplomatic relationships that linked Tibet, Mongolia, and Qing China in the 18th century.
Coquette Offering Herself, 1914, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is celebrated for his series of Berlin street scenes made between 1912 and 1915, which frequently featured streetwalkers, and are essential to understanding German Expressionism. Kirchner’s Coquette Offering Herself (Sich anbietende Kokotte) is an excellent and rare example of these works, capturing the charged atmosphere of the prewar metropolis, where freedom, desire, and anxiety often collided in public spaces.
In the scene, a fashionably dressed woman stands exposed to scrutiny as a sharply tailored man advances into her personal space, the encounter rendered through jagged, slashing lines and a steeply tilted ground plane that intensify the sense of instability and confrontation. Rather than moralizing, Kirchner presents the prostitute as an emblem of modern life—economically independent yet caught in systems of exchange—infusing the scene with empathy rather than judgment. Exceptionally rare, with only five known impressions, this example was retained by the artist as a reference print and marked “Not for sale,” reflecting its importance within his own oeuvre. It’s brilliantly inked, preserved in fine condition, and represents a landmark moment in Kirchner’s printmaking.
Head of Brahma, India, 8th–9th century
This sandstone head of Brahma is a rare and refined fragment of early medieval Hindu temple sculpture—likely originally part of a monumental standing image installed within a sacred architectural setting. As the creator deity of the Hindu Trimurti—alongside Vishnu and Shiva—Brahma occupies a foundational role in Hindu cosmology. Yet by the eighth and ninth centuries, his independent cult had waned, making sculptural representations from this period uncommon.
The four faces signify omniscience and the recitation of the four Vedas, and are rendered with gently arched brows, almond-shaped eyes, softly modeled cheeks, and subtly parted lips that convey contemplative authority. Elaborate looped and tiered coiffures, bound with floral ornaments, visually unify the heads while underscoring the deity’s regal status. Its rarity, scale, and clarity of expression make it a compelling anchor for discussions of temple art, theology, and artistic transmission in early medieval South Asia.
For more information about upcoming exhibitions, visit www.artsmia.org.
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About the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Home to more than 100,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (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. Learn more about Mia in our latest Impact Report.
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