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Fresh perspectives on art, life, and current events. From deep dives to quick takes to insightful interviews, it’s the museum in conversation. Beyond the walls. Outside the frame. Around the world.

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A sense of blackness: A dialogue across time and space through art

By Anniessa Antar and Gretchen Halverson

Keegan Xavi is a visual artist, art historian, and producer in North Minneapolis, and when she recently visited “In the Presence of Our Ancestors: Southern Perspectives in African American Art,” a new exhibition at Mia featuring the work of Black artists from the Deep South, she felt something  ...

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Collecting the subcontinent: How South Asian art evolved under colonialism

By Tim Gihring

A couple years ago, Mia received 11 paintings from the series known as the Impey Album, a gift from the collection of Elizabeth and Willard Clark. Lady Mary Impey had moved from England to India in 1773, when Britain’s East India Company was cementing control of the Indian subcontinent through bureaucracy  ...

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A soft landing for hard truths: L’Merchie Frazier’s mesmerizing quilts and the questions they ask

By Gretchen Halverson

The new exhibition “Freedom Rising: I Am the Story,” now on view at Mia, features more than a dozen quilts made by the Massachusetts artist L’Merchie Frazier, including one depicting the Civil War heroics of Robert Smalls. Born into slavery in South Carolina, Smalls escaped by commandeering the Confederate steamer he  ...

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7 takeaways from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s talk on the animacy of nature and how to respect it

By Diane Richard

When Robin Wall Kimmerer was being interviewed for college admission, in upstate New York where she grew up, she had a question herself: Why do lavender asters and goldenrod look so beautiful together? Her question was met with the condescending advice that she pursue art school instead. But Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the  ...

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Southwest artist Juan Lucero joins Mia through Native American fellowship

Juan Lucero grew up in New Mexico, moving between Albuquerque and his Isleta Pueblo community, just south of town. As a teenager, he began working as a waiter in the restaurant of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, established in Albuquerque by all 19 Pueblos in the state to share their culture: dances, art, food, history.  ...

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Mia’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide

By Rita Mehta

There’s no question that the holidays will be different this year. While there are many things we will miss this year (hugs from family and friends!), I’ve started to focus on tweaking our traditions and creating some new ones to keep our celebrations joyful and safe.  Spend Time Together, Apart Friendly  ...

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Painting a picture with words

By Stephanie Mann

I have always been fascinated by language, how we use it not only to communicate but also to express ourselves, to illustrate complex ideas. More than just a function of society, language is an art form all its own, in literature, film, theater, and music. Indeed, it even has a surprisingly  ...

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5 quotes from Jose Antonio Vargas at Mia that reveal the power of storytelling

By Stephanie Mann

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and leading voice for the human rights of immigrants. He’s also an undocumented immigrant himself, which he revealed in 2011 in a groundbreaking essay for the New York Times Magazine. That same year, he founded Define American, a nonprofit that counters injustice  ...

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The making of Rembrandt: A new exhibition shows how ego and emulation led the artist

By Tim Gihring

In the 1620s, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Lievens were both in Leiden, the small town in the southern Netherlands where they had grown up. They were both teenagers, Rembrandt just 15 months older than Lievens. They had apprenticed with the same master painter. They shared models and possibly a studio.  ...

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Picturing tragedy: Artists have historically helped us confront crises—can they do it now?

By Gretchen Halverson

In the early 1900s, the sociologist Lewis Hine taught himself photography and began documenting the thousands of immigrants arriving every day in New York Harbor. Eventually, he turned his camera on the conditions of child workers, sometimes posing as a fire inspector or Bible salesman to get into factories. (This work is  ...

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