Since the museum announced last week that it would now be known as the Minneapolis Institute of Art (singular), Mia for short, some people have sworn they will continue to call it the MIA. Or the Institute. Or some variation thereof. Some said they’d been calling it Mia all along.
A name, in other words, is not a fixed thing. We know this, of course, from personal experience. We have nicknames, whether we asked for them or not—someone started calling me T.G. a few years back, and now many of my friends do, even my wife. Sometimes names do stick, where they shouldn’t. Plenty of people still refer to the Macy’s in downtown Minneapolis as “Dayton’s.”
A look back at postcards from the early days of Mia reveals more variations on the name than you might think possible. It’s hard to say why. Clearly most if not all of these postcards were made by outside agencies, not the museum itself. Some may have gone into production before the museum was finished in 1915, like the illustrations depicting an original design that was never fully realized. Some of the names may be intentionally generic. Others may be shots in the dark, or simply careless. In a less hyper-branded era than ours—basically, all previous history—names were almost certainly less consistent, or least enforced. What was the museum going to do, send the maker an angry postcard? Even now, the museum isn’t too concerned what you call it, as long as you call.
This postcard, dated 1915, shows a grand, never-realized design for the museum that differs even from the original model now displayed at Mia. It calls the museum the “Minneapolis Institute of Art”—incorrect then, correct now.
This postcard from 1920 depicts the building as it was actually built, but calls it simply the “Art Institute.”
This postcard, circa 1920, also calls the museum the “Art Institute” with the “Minneapolis, Minn.” that all the others include, too—helpful, since they didn’t bother to include the “Minneapolis” in the actual name.
This postcard from 1925, 10 years after the museum opened, simply calls it “Art Museum.” Like a generic definition in the encyclopedia. Yep, that’s what one looks like.