Minneapolis—The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) has acquired eight works and collections that deepen the museum’s holdings across European painting, American and contemporary sculpture, Latin American kinetic art, and Japanese textiles. The acquisitions reflect Mia’s ongoing commitment to growing its collection in ways that engage both art-historically significant works and is global in its reach. Among the highlights are Francesco Francia’s Madonna and Child with Saint Francis (1503), a rare and beautifully preserved example of the Italian High Renaissance; the reunion of two 17th-century Amsterdam portraits of father and son, by Nicolaes Pickenoy and Dirck van Santvoort, separated since 1885; Alison Saar’s Citizen Cane (2025), a larger-than-life allegory of resistance and self-determination; and a collection of 335 Japanese shibori textiles assembled over decades, among the finest of its kind.
“These acquisitions speak to the thoughtfulness of our collecting process, as each of these works fills a gap, whether in a period we have wanted to strengthen, an artist long absent from our galleries, or a tradition we are now able to represent in depth,” said Katie Luber, Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. “Reuniting the Pickenoy and Santvoort portraits, and acquiring a shibori collection of this caliber, are the kinds of opportunities that come rarely. At the same time, by adding works by artists Alison Saar, Julio Le Parc, and Angus Fairhurst, we can continue to tell deeper and more connected stories across cultures and centuries.”
Madonna and Child with Saint Francis (1503), Francesco Francia, Italian (c. 1447–1517)
Francesco Francia was the leading painter of Renaissance Bologna. The son of a carpenter, he trained first as a goldsmith—rising to master of the Bolognese mint—before turning to painting in his 30s. Giorgio Vasari credited him among the artists who helped lay the foundation for the High Renaissance. His devotional pictures were prized for their gentle beauty and graceful harmony, with sacred figures absorbed in quiet contemplation.
Francia painted this panel for Paolo Zambeccari, a Bolognese senator and close friend, recording both their names in the inscription on the parapet. The Virgin and Christ Child appear in sacred conversation with Saint Francis, who bears the stigmata and gazes sorrowfully at the lively infant; the goldfinch in the Child’s hand foretells the Passion. Beautifully preserved, the painting significantly enriches Mia’s holdings of the early 16th century, joining closely related works by Lorenzo Costa and Cima da Conegliano to represent a key moment in the history of the Italian Renaissance.
Portrait of Frederik Dircksz. Alewijn (c. 1632–37), Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy, Dutch (1588–1650/1656) Portrait of Dirck Frederiksz. Alewijn (c. 1646), Dirck Dircksz. van Santvoort, Dutch (1609–1680)
These two Amsterdam portraits—one of a father, the other his young son—enter the collection together, reunited after nearly 140 years apart. Nicolaes Pickenoy was the city’s preeminent society portraitist, succeeding his teacher as Amsterdam’s leading painter of civic guards, guild regents, and wealthy citizens. His portrait of Frederik Alewijn, a wealthy merchant and alderman, presents the sitter in sumptuous black, his confident pose and the dazzling, light-catching rendering of starched lace displaying a technical brilliance that remains vivid for viewers today. Santvoort, the leading painter of children in Amsterdam during his brief career, portrays Frederik’s son Dirck at about age two, in an immaculate white silk dress with a gold rattle and a pink ostrich-feather cap, beside an obedient deerhound that signals the Dutch ideal of discipline.
Both works remained with descendants of the family until they were split apart in 1885 with the sale of the Alewijn collection. Newly reunited, they tell a far richer story together—of both art history and 17th-century Dutch social history—and meaningfully elevate Mia’s holdings of Dutch portraiture.
Citizen Cane (2025), Alison Saar, American (born 1956)
Alison Saar is a critically acclaimed sculptor, painter, and printmaker whose work explores Black female identity and the African American experience through a historical lens. Working with found and repurposed materials—which she believes retain “memory and spirit”—she creates figures that function as visual allegories of strength, defiance, and determination.
Citizen Cane is a larger-than-life figure of an enslaved African woman, presented wearing a belt of machetes and holding a burning torch aloft, recalling other personifications of freedom such as the Statue of Liberty and Marianne, the national emblem of the French Republic. In Saar’s work, the machete—the essential tool of the sugarcane plantation—becomes a symbol of resistance and rebellion, while also alluding to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, whose golden girdle gave her strength and power. The second work by Saar to enter Mia’s collection, the sculpture strengthens the museum’s holdings of contemporary work by women artists and artists of color, and amplifies universal ideals of freedom and self-determination.
Formes en contorsion sur trame (1969), Julio Le Parc, Argentinian (1928–2026); published by Editions Denise René, Paris
Julio Le Parc was a central figure in Op and Kinetic art. A founding member of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) in Paris, he became known for using industrial materials such as Plexiglas and stainless steel to manipulate light and movement. In 1966, he won the Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale, which established him as a leader of geometric abstraction. Le Parc also became an early advocate for the “multiple” as a component of artistic production, seeing it as “at the junction of artistic creation and industrial production,” challenging the exclusivity of the art object and making art more widely accessible.
Formes en contorsion sur trame belongs to one of the earliest and most significant series of Le Parc’s career, the moment he introduced actual movement into his work. Stainless-steel blades on electrically powered rotating pins distort and reflect a black-and-white striped panel, producing shifting waves and optical vibrations that change as the viewer watches. The work is a multiple—a signed limited edition—and is the first work by Le Parc to enter Mia’s collection, introducing both the dimension of physical movement and a stronger representation of Argentinian artists to the museum’s holdings.
Autumn (c. 1863–66), Emma Stebbins, American (1815–1882)
Emma Stebbins was a New York sculptor who worked in Rome from 1856 to 1870, where she belonged to a celebrated community of expatriate American women artists centered on Harriet Hosmer. The circle was a haven for women who rejected the constraints of their time, many forming committed same-sex partnerships; Stebbins and her partner, the famed stage actress Charlotte Cushman, openly described themselves as married. Though well-recognized in her time, today Stebbins is best remembered for the Angel of the Waters atop Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain, for which she was the first woman to receive a public commission for a major work of art in New York City. The acquisition carries forward Mia’s representation of women and LGBTQ artists, and opens new opportunities to explore the histories of gender, sexuality, and expatriate life in the 19th century.
In Autumn, also known as Bacchus, Stebbins departs from more exuberant depictions of the Roman god of wine, presenting him as a calm, graceful figure in an assertive contrapposto, a carefully carved bundle of grapes in his hand. Only 14 of Stebbins’ sculptural compositions were ever carved in marble, with never more than four copies of each produced. No other example of Autumn is known, making this a unique work.
A Couple of Differences Between Thinking and Feeling II (2003), Angus Fairhurst, British (1966–2008)
Angus Fairhurst was a member of the Young British Artists, the group that rose to prominence in England in the 1990s with experimental work that expanded the boundaries of contemporary practice. Humor was often at the core of his art, and the gorilla became a recurring motif across his drawings and sculptures, frequently appearing in farcical or uncanny poses. In this cast-bronze sculpture, a one-armed gorilla stares at its own detached limb, a moment that, for Fairhurst, alluded to “the moment when self-consciousness dawns.” The work—the first by Fairhurst to enter Mia’s collection—invites visitors to pause on that flicker of recognition that so often passes unnoticed, using humor to engage and provoke.
Group of 335 shibori textiles (mid-19th–mid-20th century), Japan
Shibori is a traditional Japanese resist-dyeing technique in which cloth is tied, folded, stitched, or wrapped so that certain areas resist the dye, producing intricate patterns, most often created with indigo on cotton. Widely used for everyday garments such as kimono and summer yukata, shibori also embodies a core Japanese aesthetic: the final pattern can never be fully predicted, and its irregularities are embraced as part of the work’s beauty.
Assembled over several decades by John Ruddy and Kumiko Masumoto, this collection of 335 textiles—part purchase, part gift—spans a remarkable range of patterns and techniques, some centuries old and others now lost. Most pieces date to the Meiji (1868–1912) and Taishō (1912–1926) eras and were selected for their age, design, rarity of technique, and depth of color, with most dyed in botanical indigo and a few in rare shikon (gromwell-root) purple and benihana (safflower) reddish pink. Already home to important collections of Japanese art, this acquisition transforms Mia’s Japanese textile holdings—which previously included 26 shibori works—into one of the leading collections of its kind.
For more information on this and upcoming exhibitions, visit www.artsmia.org.
###
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.
General admission to Mia is always free, but some special exhibitions charge a nominal fee.
For more information, call 1-612-870-3000 or visit artsmia.org. Everyone is welcome. Always.