Mia had its eye on these lions, guarding a shop in Shanghai. But they proved too difficult to export.
Stoic, vigilant, fierce—Mia’s guardian lions watch over the 24th Street entrance of the museum. Today, the lions are a symbol of Mia, featured on postcards, mugs, and prints in the Store at Mia. But prior to 1998, going back to when the museum was built in 1915, their pedestals were unoccupied.
In the 1990s, Ella Crosby was looking to make a major gift to the city of Minneapolis, something that would create a visual impact. She and her family were longtime patrons of the museum. She was a granddaughter of Charles A. Pillsbury, one of Mia’s founders, and had grown up nearby. She had been president of the Friends of the Institute. And when she was considering her gift, she remembered the pedestals in front of the museum—to her, they had always seemed empty. Lions seemed like the ideal residents.
One of Mia’s lions, being carved in China in the style of the 1700s.
For centuries, great stone statues of lions had been used as guardian figures in China, flanking the entrances to palaces, temples, and grand homes. The lions were believed to protect the buildings from evil. In modern-day China, they have retained their symbolism, and while they can sometimes be found in front of restaurants, hotels, and shops, they remain on guard in front of important institutions.
A lion, lying down.
As it happens, at the same time that Ella was exploring a gift, the Minneapolis Institute of Art was rapidly expanding its collection of Asian art. New galleries were being installed to accommodate the influx of Chinese and Japanese objects. Traditional Chinese statues seemed a perfect fit for the museum’s facade.
Robert Jacobsen, Mia’s curator of Asian art at the time, went to China to search for the perfect pair of 18th-century guardian lions. He found them in Shanghai, guarding the entrance to a nondescript store.
The lions being installed at Mia in the summer of 1998.
The statues, however, proved too difficult to export. So Jacobsen arranged for copies to be carved, in the same 18th-century style. The lions were finished in 1998 and, with their bases, weighed 16 tons. The 1915 stairway had to be reinforced with more than 30 tons of concrete to support their tremendous bulk.
The lion statues arrived in Minneapolis that summer. Early in the morning, the pair could be seen riding through rush-hour traffic to the steps of the museum.
They were lifted by crane onto the pedestals at the 24th Street entrance. Perched in front of their new home in Minnesota, the guardian lions would become an iconic image of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
A detail of one of Mia’s lions shows a female restraining a cub with her paw.
Did you know: Traditionally, pairs of guardian statues represent both a male and female lion. If you look carefully at Mia’s lions you can spot which is which. On the left, the male lion holds an embroidered ball, symbolizing supremacy over the world. The female lion on the right is playing with her rambunctious cub beneath her paw, an ancient pun on two official positions—the larger lion representing the more important role.