The assumption about Miley Cyrus—the former Hannah Montana good girl turned twerking, toking bad girl—is that she’s trying to grow up (a judgment that’s hard even to write without sounding paternalistic). But more likely it’s us, the audience, who need to grow up. And a lot of famous if mostly dead artists might agree. Take  ...

When the new Africa galleries at the MIA open to the public on Sunday, November 10, you may wonder where these objects have been all your life. These drums, these masks. Some, in fairness, you never knew: they were recently acquired. Others you just never saw for what they were: objects meant not to be  ...

Artist Sarah Burns has brought an odd feeling of home to the MIA with her MAEP exhibition “midday.” Her sculptures are given plenty of breathing room in the gallery, spaced like strangers at a party, a meditation on vaguely familiar objects taking unfamiliar forms. If you’re curious how someone sees beauty in innocuous items, or  ...

At 16, she was an imperial concubine in the Forbidden City. Soon, in a desperate bid to open China to the outside world, she seized power for herself. Now, a new book claims Cixi, who ruled China as the empress dowager for much of the second half of the 19th century, was the real instigator  ...

The controversy over the Washington Redskins’ name and logo is flaring up again after recent high-profile criticism from sportscaster Bob Costas, Keith Olbermann, and even President Obama. And protestors are seizing the moment: they’ll be at the Metrodome on Thursday when that certain Washington football team plays the Vikings. But a look through the MIA  ...

The controversy over the Washington Redskins’ name and logo is flaring up again after recent high-profile criticism from sportscaster Bob Costas, Keith Olbermann, and even President Obama. And protestors are seizing the moment: they’ll be at the Metrodome on Thursday when that certain Washington football team plays the Vikings. But a look through the MIA  ...

Artists are generally carefree, of sunny disposition, rarely given to dark or macabre thoughts. I don’t know if you knew that. But a few of them, at least, have created these fantastic images of ghosts found in the MIA collections. Some  are more stereotypically Halloweeny than you’d expect to find in an art museum, others  ...

This weekend, the MIA opens a must-see exhibition for photography fans: 31 Years: Gifts from Martin Weinstein, featuring a good chunk of the more than 500 photographs given to the MIA over the decades by the former trial attorney and current gallery owner, including greats like August Sander, Josef Ruzicka, W. Eugene Smith, and his  ...

“Everything is bigger in America.”  I heard this repeatedly from English friends while living in London in the 1970s and ’80s. And, for the most part, they were right. Cars, houses, shopping malls, food portions—everything was bigger in America. Even the saga of J.R. Ewing on Dallas, the era’s emblematic TV show, symbolized the size,  ...

“Everything is bigger in America.”  I heard this repeatedly from English friends while living in London in the 1970s and ’80s. And, for the most part, they were right. Cars, houses, shopping malls, food portions—everything was bigger in America. Even the saga of J.R. Ewing on Dallas, the era’s emblematic TV show, symbolized the size,  ...