Do not dismiss Jonathan Herrera Soto’s exhibition “In Between / Underneath (Entremedio / Por Debajo)” as yet another political commentary. The exhibition, which is on view in Mia’s U.S. Bank Gallery through November 3, consists of three print series: Love Poems/Poemas de Amor, Untitled/Sin titulo, and In Between / Underneath (Entremedio / Por Debajo). In each of these works,  ...

Joe Horton grew up in Milwaukee, studied psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, and eventually gravitated to the Twin Cities, where his mix of music, theater, visual art, and philosophy has attracted a cohort of steady collaborators. (Horton would call it a collective if that didn’t sound so precious.) He is currently the artist-in-residence  ...

“What if the way you experience the world, your perspective, and all that informs it were turned on their head?” The question is posed on the wall label for three films presented in the “Mapping Black Identities” exhibition now on view at Mia. It’s a disarming question, inviting the visitor into the space as an active  ...

In the world of Julie Buffalohead, coyotes wear tutus, host tea parties, and play with shadow puppets. They, and their fellow animals, are allegorical figures — stand-ins for subjects both overtly political and deeply personal. Now, one of Buffalohead’s anthropomorphic fables, called The Garden (a sly commentary on the controversy over a scaffold sculpture at the Minneapolis Sculpture  ...

When Mia began designing “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” the first major exhibition of work by Native women artists, the museum wanted to avoid overt references to indigenous motifs, like zig-zag patterns or crosses. For a while, it even considered painting the walls plain white. Ultimately, the decision was made to go with three  ...

For the better part of a hundred years, the Tudor Room at Mia changed very little. It was the museum’s first period room, and everything about it—the paneling, the furniture, the stained-glass windows—evoked upper-class England in the 1600s. Now, a new tale is unfolding there. “Turkish Rugs on Tudor Walls: 16th-century Trade between England and the Islamic  ...

Mia’s new podcast, The Object, began this spring with a fairly simple premise. Tell the curious, incredible, sometimes heartbreaking stories behind the people and objects that have made the museum what it is today. Only it’s not so simple. In telling the stories of objects, artists, and collectors, the museum emerges at the center of some  ...

Language matters. More than two years ago, when Mia was planning the exhibition “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” we wrote grants that said we would translate the labels for the artworks in the exhibition into a Native language. The exhibition includes the art of more than 115 Native women, from the past 1,000 years—it’s the first major  ...

After decades of decline, empathy—or the desire for it, at least—is suddenly everywhere. From corporate culture to academia, the urge to instill empathy in a world divided, unequal, and burdened by conflict has become, well, urgent. The University of California, San Diego, plans to create a Center for Empathy in consultation with the Dalai Lama. And  ...

Our tour group is standing in Mia’s African Art galleries facing a terracotta head. It’s from Nigeria and depicts a woman’s face, placid and peaceful, the creases in her neck suggestive of fatty tissue—a sign of wealth and prosperity. It was likely made to memorialize someone who died. But our tour guide does not linger  ...