Exhibitions

Upcoming Exhibitions

In the early days of the Renaissance, artists emphasized order. Inspired by ancient Roman architecture and sculpture, they created structured compositions and statuesque figures that evoked lofty, rational thought. However, new ideas began to emerge. In 1506, the excavation of the ancient Laocoön sculpture, depicting the Trojan priest and his sons writhing as they&#8217;re attacked by sea serpents, released Renaissance figures from static poses. Artists began to manipulate the science of perspective and often dropped the idea of images representing the world as seen through a window. Earthy and outlandish thought flourished. Many images became just plain weird. With their creativity unleashed, artists left to us the joy of strangeness.
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Pencil sketch of four muscular naked men on top of each others shoulders against a beige background

The Weirdening of the Renaissance

This exhibition features paintings, drawings, prints, and more by local high school student artists who participated in a program reflecting on the last five years in Minneapolis. Taking inspiration from the exhibition &#8220;Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,&#8221; students were encouraged to see themselves as giants. Artists Kprecia Ambers, Leslie Barlow, Graci Horne, Lissa Karpeh, and Akiko Ostlund, whose work is also on view, worked with students during multiple visits to create this powerful exhibition.
Sponsored by:
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Photograph of the backs of three young people who are standing in front of an artwork in a Mia gallery

Teen Perspectives: Minneapolis as Monument

“Remnants” brings together artworks by South African artists who focus on the invisible and visible structures of colonization and apartheid (1948–1994)—and their historical impacts. In some instances, artists directly critique the destructive forces of apartheid on South Africans of color. By centering the everyday lives of people living under the regime of apartheid, these works reveal the individual humanity of their subjects while illuminating the forces of their oppression. In response to South Africa’s democratization in 1994, artists in this show devise fresh visual language for a newly expressive era. Drawn mostly from Mia’s collection, the works within this show reveal the breadth of artistic practice that flourished during and after the apartheid regime.

Black-and-white photograph of overgrown hedges that have become so thick they look like a wall

Remnants

Charles Matson Lume’s &#8220;lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin),&#8221; 2025, uses common materials such as plastic sheeting, hologram tape, and light, while the word lacuna is uncommon and means gap or empty space, derived from the Latin words lake or lagoon. The themes found in his site-specific installation are based on light, poetry, beauty, and mortality.
Matson Lume is a visual artist whose art is engaged in the pas de deux of light and matter. He’s exhibited his work at numerous institutions, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin, Ireland), Babel Kunst (Trondheim, Norway), Kemijärvi Art Gallery (Kemijärvi, Finland), and Hunter College, (New York City). Matson Lume has received fellowships from the Bush Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. He&#8217;s participated in artist residencies in Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and the United States. Matson Lume holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lives in Saint Paul.
The exhibition is part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, celebrating 50 years in 2025.
Support provided by RBC Wealth Management.

an abstract pieces of art with blue, teal, and orange colors made from plastic sheeting, hologram tape, mylar sleeping bags, sequined fabric, paper mache snowy owls, EMT conduit tubing corners, Kodak proofing paper, Bytek tape, and monofilament line

Charles Matson Lume: lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin)

Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota, Mary Sully was a reclusive artist who, between the 1920s and 1940s, created highly distinctive works informed by her Native American and settler ancestry. This first solo exhibition of Sully&#8217;s groundbreaking production highlights recent Mia acquisitions, works that complicate traditional notions of Native American and modern art.
Major support for Mia’s presentation provided by Lorraine R Hart.

Detailed view of Mary Sully's Spring artwork, which shows a repeated pattern of green, red, and beige shapes

Mary Sully: Native Modern

Presented by
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“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is a groundbreaking exhibition that marks the first major showcase of the Dean Collection, owned by renowned musicians and cultural icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys.
Organized by the Brooklyn Museum, “Giants” highlights nearly 100 significant works by Black diasporic artists, including Gordon Parks, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson, Amy Sherald, and more. The exhibition reflects the Deans&#8217; passion for supporting established and emerging artists while fostering important dialogues about art, culture, and identity.
“Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” is organized by Kimberli Gant, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.
Individual tickets go on sale February 14. Mia members at the Contributor level and above can reserve tickets early starting February 1.
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For school group and university group tours of &#8220;Giants,&#8221; please submit a <a href="https://form.asana.com/?k=tqLIfnaCtjGam1FAAZ24Nw&amp;d=67236691525505">tour request form</a>.
Prepare your students for a visit with this guide.
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Related Events

Color photo of an African American woman with an afro wearing a beaded halter top set against a blue background

Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys

Spanning almost a century of creativity, &#8220;Transcendent Clay&#8221; offers a panoramic look at the achievements of the Kondō family of ceramicists based in Kyoto, Japan. The legacy of porcelain-making began with Kondō Yūzō (1902–1985) in the 1930s and continued with his sons Yutaka (1932–1983) and Hiroshi (1936–2012), who broke free to pursue original, individual expressions. Ultimately it was the grandson Takahiro (born 1958) who emerged as the family’s greatest innovator by developing the secret technique of applying a “silver mist” (gintekisai) of metallic droplets to his modern forms.
This exhibition brings together a wide range of works including freehand-painted vases, pure-white jars, and Takahiro’s dramatic shapes and textures, which he describes as “water born from fire.” Most of the works are from the collection of Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz, long-time supporters of Mia.

Transcendent Clay: The Kondō Family’s Path of Porcelain Innovations

Artists at Work: The Mia Staff Art Show

Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection

At the Moulin Rouge

Latin American Art at Mia II

Not all of the artistry at Mia comes from outside the museum—many employees are artists as well, and this exhibition spotlights their work.
The Staff Art Show was organized and curated by Team Mia, a group of museum staff devoted to cultivating a positive work environment, encouraging generosity and relationship-building among staff, providing accessible opportunities for connection and growth, and recognizing and celebrating museum employees. We are pleased to showcase the immense talent among us.

Colorful scene of mountains in blue, green, teal, purple, and orange with a bright pink sky

&#8220;Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room: The Alice S. Kandell Collection&#8221; includes more than two hundred gilt-bronze sculptures, paintings, silk hangings, and carpets that were created in Tibet between the 1300s and early 1900s. Buddhist ritual objects are displayed in the context of an elaborate private household shrine, a space used for offerings, devotional prayer, rituals, and contemplation. With its flickering candlelight, sonorous chanting, and the subtle smell of incense, the glittering room provides an oasis for peaceful contemplation within the galleries at Mia.
Tour a selection of objects in this guide. 
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Prepare your students for a visit with this guide. 
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Step Inside the Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room &#8211; 3D Virtual Tour 
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L2023.76.198

An aristocratic transplant to the bohemian haunts of Paris, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec captured the nightclubs and cabarets of Montmartre in the 1880s and ’90s, setting to canvas and paper their glittering lights and dazzling entertainments. Among his favorite spots were Le Chat Noir, Le Mirliton, and, above all others, the Moulin Rouge. One of his most remarkable paintings, At the Moulin Rouge, captures a night at the legendary nightclub with a band of regulars, including several of its most famous performers and Toulouse-Lautrec himself.
On loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, At the Moulin Rouge is at the center of this exhibition about Toulouse-Lautrec, his circle of fellow artists, and how they depicted the transformation of Parisian nightlife at the turn of the century. The exhibition features a dozen rarely seen works from Mia’s collection, including French posters and drawings from the era.
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Major Sponsor:
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Upcoming Events

Image of At the Moulin Rouge, a painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Art from Latin America and the Caribbean has been collected by Mia since the 1940s, particularly in the form of ceramics, objects in gold, and textiles produced by artmakers of the ancient civilizations that populated Central and South America. The collection has significantly increased over the years largely because of donations and purchases of works by historical and contemporary artists. These artworks constitute today the foundation in which the museum plans to build a more consistent and inclusive collection, one that can better represent the diversity and creativity of Latin American artists.

Current Exhibitions

Bizen: Contemporary Expressions of an Ancient Japanese Pottery

Splendid Patchwork: Buddhist Monastic Robes

O’ Powa O’ Meng: The Art and Legacy of Jody Folwell

JoAnn Verburg: Aftershocks

Bizen ware, characterized by its rich reddish-brown clay with natural ash glaze, is one of Japan’s six pottery traditions. Originating from today’s Okayama prefecture on the Seto Inland Sea, its history reaches back to the 14th century. It peaked during the late 16th century when the tea masters in and around Kyoto, the center of culture in Japan, found it most appealing. With the modernization of Japan in the mid-19th century, Bizen almost disappeared, but the tradition was revived in the 1930s and many artists since have explored its potential. While some have stayed closer to conventional forms, others have surprised with new shapes while staying true to the core of Bizen. This exhibition showcases the journey in Bizen from the 16th century to the 21st.

2019.92.4

This magnificent group of robes from Mia’s collection belonged to high-ranking Buddhist priests. Known as kashaya, they were designed to be draped over the left shoulder, under the right arm, and fastened in front under the left shoulder, and are more elaborate than the robes worn by most Buddhist monks. Yet they were fabricated from small squares sewn together, symbolizing the humble nature of Buddha. Within these patchwork squares are various Buddhist motifs and sometimes imperial imagery in which dragons cavort in the celestial landscape. Rich with courtly symbolism, the robes were likely worn in Buddhist ceremonies at monasteries patronized by the court or within the Forbidden City itself.

A potter from Kha&#8217;p&#8217;o Owingeh (Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico), Jody Folwell has revolutionized Pueblo pottery—and Native art more broadly—over the past five decades. The first Pueblo artist to place personal, political and social narratives on her pottery, she has pushed the boundaries of form, content, and design while remaining firmly within the art traditions of her community.
This exhibition, &#8220;O’ Powa O’ Meng&#8221; (“I came here, I got here, I’m still going”), was organized by Mia and the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia. These iconic works span the breadth of Folwell&#8217;s groundbreaking career, demonstrating the arc of her artistic development and integrating a trailblazing Native American artist within the wider canon of contemporary American art.
This exhibition was organized by the Fralin Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
This catalogue and exhibition are made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Major support for Mia&#8217;s presentation provided by Lorraine R Hart.

In 2016, while working in Spoleto, Italy, JoAnn Verburg experienced three major earthquakes. The aftershocks, which continued for months, unnerved her. With parts of buildings still falling around her, she couldn’t shake a sense of impending catastrophe. Her anxieties were enhanced by the major events that followed, from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to the global pandemic. For Verburg, as for so many others, the world felt dangerously out of balance.
Long known for her exquisite landscapes and innovative techniques in photography and video, Verburg questioned how to continue making beautiful art amid the devastating reality of world events. Beneath the surface of the mesmerizing images of nature in &#8220;Aftershocks,&#8221; the question lingers, as she explores loss, dread, and the healing power of art in a time of worldwide change and upheaval.
Presenting Sponsor: David Wilson and Michael Peterman
Major Sponsors: Samuel Heins and Stacey Mills Heins
Supporting Sponsor: UBS Financial Services