Pride at Mia
Celebrate the exceptional historical and creative achievements of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community with art, stories, events, and more—curated by Mia’s 2SLGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group. We acknowledge that Pride is a celebration of the decades-long fight—often led by trans women of color—that got us to where we are today.
June Pride Events
June 26 at 5 p.m. | Meet at Mia: Pride in Concert
Tours
Take a self-guided Pride-themed tour, created by Mia’s 2SLGBTQIA+ ERG.
About the 2SLGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group
Comprised of staff from multiple departments, this group aims to create a space for employees to think about museum content and staff advocacy through the lens of the queer experience. 2SLGBTQIA+ stands for Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual, +
Past Exhibitions
The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989
March 23, 2024 – June 23, 2024
This exhibition features the first generation of artists of Korean descent to experience the new freedoms and rapid changes ushered in by democracy. Born between 1960 and 1986, they came of age in a time of transition, their work filtered through the collective memory of authoritarian rule in South Korea.
Networks of Care
January 13, 2024 – June 16, 2024
Acts of care can unfold in surprising ways, in surprising places. At work, where colleagues care for their collaborations. At bars, where strangers care for an impromptu community. At home, where artists may care for children and the muse in joyful, if precarious, balance.
Christopher Selleck: Body//Weight
March 18, 2023 – June 25, 2023
At the core of the exhibition by Minneapolis-based artist Christopher Selleck is a seven-year investigation into body image and the depiction of the ideal masculine figure. Selleck worked collaboratively with each model to present a more vulnerable version of the sitter.
Teo Nguyen: Việt Nam Peace Project
Teo Nguyễn: Giấc Mơ Hòa Bình
July 30, 2022 – June 18, 2023
Teo Nguyen’s solo museum exhibition invites contemplation and reflection on the Vietnamese people’s struggles toward peace and what the artist calls “the politics of worthiness.” Nguyen tells stories of heartbreak, optimism, resistance, and reconciliation that are interwoven into Vietnamese culture and spiritualism.
Pride Self-Guided Tour
This tour seeks to highlight 2SLGBTQIA+ artists and themes through a small selection of artworks spanning centuries and social epochs. Some pieces include the multicultural perspectives of ritual and religion; others are more explicit in their portrayal of life through a queer lens.
Explore the Art
Many queer artists are represented in Mia’s collection. Explore these works by artists who have publicly identified as queer and by historical artists considered to have been queer based on their biographies.
Podcast Episodes
The Man Who Broke the World
Truth, beauty, transcendence. For millennia, people think they know the rules of great art. Then, in the 1950s, a guy named Bob breaks every one of them, declaring car tires and Coke bottles and entirely blank canvases part of his art–and, in turn, being declared the greatest artist of his time. As war gives way to optimism, is Robert Rauschenberg offering a weary world a new way of seeing, or is he simply, entertainingly, lucratively bamboozling it?
Dangerous Liaisons: What Happened to the First Queer Art Star?
Simeon Solomon—bold, dashing, and openly queer—is a rising star in the Victorian art world when a scandal in 1873 supposedly forces him into obscurity, a cautionary tale for fans like Oscar Wilde. But the truth is more complicated and only now coming to light, revealing the fate of this forgotten figure as both more tragic and more inspiring.
You can see an “allegorical self-portrait” here, from the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
You can see his haunting masterwork “Love in Autumn” here.
The Psychic Sculptor
In 1852, Harriet Hosmer packs her pistol, her anatomy degree, and two pictures of a sculpture she made and moves to Rome. There, among other “emancipated women” in the expat colony, she becomes one of the world’s most famous artists. But it’s the spirit world that truly calls to her, the realm of the dead that she channels through clairvoyance and seances. So what happens when she answers?
You can see her remarkably tender sculpture of Medusa, referenced in this episode, in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Click here to see it.
Listen to this episode of our podcast here, or search “The Object” wherever you listen to podcasts to subscribe.
Pride Care Package
Pride Care Package
Art has the ability to make connections with ourselves, each other and our world. Practicing self-care and creating a healthy relationship with ourselves helps us better connect with and support others, and how we care for ourselves and each other in these times is essential.
Impact Stories
Mia is Inclusion
Pieter Valk rarely enjoyed art museums—until he came to Mia. Valk, who runs a nonprofit focused on LGBTQI issues, explains how he connected with people and ideas across the centuries through the art at Mia.