Competing for jobs is tough, time-consuming, and an emotional rollercoaster. It can be difficult to maintain a positive attitude when you work hard at it but still run into barriers and rejections. I was recently in that position myself—once again—and now it’s what I think about every day as Mia’s first Diversity and Inclusion Manager.  ...

Last Thursday, a crowd gathered at Mia for a panel discussion called “Make Design Weird Again.” Moderated by Charles K. Youel of ARTCRANK, it was part of Design Night with AIGA Minnesota and featured five Twin Cities creatives. As people filed in, Youel gave a shout-out to his wife, who’d just returned from a synchronized  ...

I like to play basketball at the school near my house. There’s a soccer field, some baseball diamonds, a playground, and a basketball court. A lot of the time, I’ll go there after working at Mia. It gives me something to think about besides photographs and art history, since that’s mostly what I do, as  ...

By Nicole LaBouff, associate curator of textiles at Mia, and Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers, curator of African art at Mia and head of the Department of the Arts of Africa and the Americas ••• This past May, Mia welcomed Malian artist Aboubakar Fofana. He was at the museum to discuss a potential exhibition in Mia’s Charleston period rooms, in  ...

Last year, when Mia was installing its Qing gate at the entrance to the museum’s Chinese galleries, Joyce Sun visited with her father. They were planning Sun’s wedding, still nailing down the venue, when her father noticed the gate. It came from Shanxi, a neighboring province of Shandong, the province where he and his family  ...

Among the accomplishments of Black Panther—first all-black superhero movie, 10th highest-grossing film of all time—is something that African-American artists have awaited for a long time: the mainstream emergence of Afrofuturism. A movement borne in the cultural margins of the 1970s, now on the big screen in multiplexes around the world. Blending African history with technology  ...