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Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia)

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Minneapolis Institute of Art

The original front façade of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) at 2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis. Photo by Wikimedia Commons user McGhiever, June 3, 2018. Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0.

When the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) opened in 1915 it exhibited 450 pieces of art, most of them on loan. In the twenty-first century it is an encyclopedic art museum, boasting a collection of more than 89,000 objects that spans 20,000 years and six continents; special exhibitions on topics that have ranged from Star Wars to Martin Luther; and a presence in the community that reflects more than a century of local support for the arts.

Mia was an outgrowth of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts (MSFA), which was founded in 1883 and maintained a small gallery on the top floor of the Minneapolis Public Library. At an MSFA dinner on January 10, 1911, financier DeWitt Clinton Morrison announced that he would donate ten acres of land so the society could build a museum, provided they could raise $500,000 for the building. MFSA President William Dunwoody immediately pledged $100,000, and a pledging frenzy ensued. Within ninety minutes, dinner guests had pledged another $250,000. The rest of the money was raised within the month.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts ("Arts" included a final "s" until 2015) opened on January 8, 1915, in a neoclassical building designed by the New York firm McKim, Mead and White. A columned portico provided entry on East Twenty-Fourth Street. Accessibility was a paramount value: the museum offered free admission three days a week and complimentary wheelchairs. Attendance that first year exceeded nearly 148,000.

As befits an institution that opened in the Minnesota winter, support for the new museum snowballed. Dunwoody, who died in 1914, bequeathed $1 million in his will. Morrison’s daughter, Ethel Van Derlip, left the museum $500,000 in 1921; businessman James Ford Bell began donating American silver in 1932; and flour magnate Alfred F. Pillsbury bequeathed his entire Asian collection in 1950. By the turn of the twenty-first century, major donors included Target Corporation and Bruce and Ruth Dayton.

Mia began building its collection at once. In addition to donations, major acquisitions have included an intact Egyptian mummy and coffin case (1916); Rembrandt’s Lucretia (1934); and, in 1992, the Jade Mountain, at 640 pounds the largest piece of imperial carved jade outside of China. In 1998 Mia opened twenty-two galleries of Asian art, including an entire seventeenth-century (Ming Dynasty) reception hall. It was purchased in China, then dismantled piece by piece—from floor tiles to carved wooden ceiling—before being crated, shipped, and reassembled at the museum. The room, and the scholar’s study that Mia acquired at the same time, showcase the museum’s outstanding collection of Chinese furniture and form the centerpiece of an Asian art collection that is among the finest in the country.

As Mia’s collections have expanded, so has its physical space. An auditorium, galleries, and office space were added in 1927. Major change came in 1974, when the MSFA realized its goal of creating unified space for its three constituent organizations: the Children’s Theater Company, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and Mia. The project, designed by Japanese architect Kenzō Tange, included a complete renovation of Mia’s existing building and two new wings, doubling Mia’s exhibition and education space. The new design also directly connected the museum to the Children’s Theater Company with a joint entrance on Third Avenue South.

More galleries were added in 1998. In 2006 the museum opened its largest addition to date, the Target Wing, designed by Michael Graves. This added 40 percent more exhibition space, primarily for modern and non-Western art.

The Target Wing also increased by 80 percent the space available for the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP), an artist-run curatorial department. The program mounts several exhibitions per year of work by Minnesota artists and represents a unique partnership between a museum and its local artistic community.

Accessibility has remained a cornerstone of Mia’s mission. In 1989 the museum dropped its admission fee (then two dollars) for all but special exhibitions. In addition to MAEP, Mia has presented exhibitions by local Hmong, Somali, and Native American artists. Blockbuster exhibitions draw huge crowds. A 2018–2019 exhibition of undersea finds from ancient Egypt attracted 154,000 visitors. Overall attendance at the museum reached almost 780,000 in fiscal year 2019.

Mia’s collection continues to grow in the twenty-first century with recent loans and bequests from, respectively, Myron Kunin and Mary Griggs Burke, both in 2015.

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Abbe, Mary. “Brands on the Run: An Image Change at Minneapolis Institute of Art Coincides with a Minneapolis Gallery’s Show on Branding.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 14, 2015.

——— . “China Patterns.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 23, 1998.

——— . “The MIA at 100: The People’s Museum.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 11, 2015.

——— . “The MIA at 100: Treasures of the MIA.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 11, 2015.

——— . “MIA Lands Vast Art Trove: Bequest by Mary Griggs Burke will Elevate its Japanese Collection.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 16, 2015.

——— . “Ming Dynasty Chair Is Broken When Museum Visitor Sits On It.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 6, 2000.

——— . “Modernist Art Trove is Birthday Surprise at MIA: Museum Kicks off Centennial with Collectors Gift.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 1, 2015.

——— . “A Mountain of Jade.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 23, 1992.

“Art Institute Adds Rembrandt to Collection on Twentieth Anniversary.” Minneapolis Star, January 10, 1935.

“Bulk of William H. Dunwoody’s Estate Goes to Institutions of Minneapolis.” Minneapolis Tribune, February 15, 1914.

Carpenter, Florence Welles. How the Art Institute Was Built, 1883–1915. Minneapolis: Unpublished, March 5, 1950. Available at the Minnesota Historical Society library as P1189-6.

“Directors of Art Institute Look Back on Gratifying Year.” Minneapolis Tribune, January 1, 1916.

Eler, Alicia. “‘Egypt’s Sunken Cities’ Leads a Record-setting Year for Minneapolis Institute of Art.” Artcetera, Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 26, 2019.

Martin, Mary Abbe. “Institute’s Divorce Gave New Director Clean Slate.” Minneapolis Tribune, August 13, 1989.

Mia.
https://new.artsmia.org

Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board. Morrison Park.
https://www.minneapolisparks.org/parks__destinations/parks__lakes/morrison_park

The Minneapolis Society of Arts Compendium of Information. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, 1922. Available at the Minnesota Historical Society library as N11.M65 M55 1922.

The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts Park: Inaugural Celebration, September 6–October 6, 1974. Minneapolis: The Society, 1974. Available at the Minnesota Historical Society library as Folio NX805.M55.

“Mrs. VanDerlip Wills Half Million Dollars for Art Advancement.” Minneapolis Tribune, December 1, 1921.

“Pillsbury Wills Gift to Art Unit.” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, March 26, 1950.

Tillotson, Kristin. “Grand Reopening; Wing Ding.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 11, 2006.

——— . “Mended Ming Chair Is Back—To Look At, Not to Sit Upon.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 25, 2001.

Waller, Betty. Bringing Art to Life: the Rebirth of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Grand Reopening September 27, 1998. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1998. Available at the Minnesota Historical Society library as N582.6 B75 1998.

Related Images

Minneapolis Institute of Art
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Wu family reception hall
Wu family reception hall
Olive Trees (Vincent Van Gogh)
Olive Trees (Vincent Van Gogh)
 Yoruba head
 Yoruba head
Doryphoros
Doryphoros
Frank (Chuck Close)
Frank (Chuck Close)
Jade Mountain
Jade Mountain
Lucretia (Rembrandt)
Lucretia (Rembrandt)
Original entrance of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Original entrance of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Visitor inside the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Visitor inside the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Minneapolis Institute of Art guard with visitors
Minneapolis Institute of Art guard with visitors
Third Avenue entrance to the Minneapolis Museum of Art
Third Avenue entrance to the Minneapolis Museum of Art
Howling Dog (Paul Klee)
Howling Dog (Paul Klee)
Banjo Lesson (Mary Cassatt)
Banjo Lesson (Mary Cassatt)
Anishinaabe or Dakota dance blanket (detail)
Anishinaabe or Dakota dance blanket (detail)

Turning Point

In 1974 the museum opens a $34 million expansion that adds 40 percent more gallery space and links its building to both the Children’s Theater Company and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). Although the original entrance on East Twenty-fourth Street remains open, the museum reorients itself towards a new lobby and entrance on Third Avenue South.

Chronology

1916

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is dedicated on January 7 at a ceremony attended by members and friends of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts. The museum opens to the public the following day.

1934

Mia acquires Rembrandt’s Lucretia. Rembrandt painted two versions of this tragic subject, a legendary Roman noblewoman who was raped by one of her husband’s enemies and committed suicide.

1960

Mia acquires a complete Paul Revere tea service from James Ford Bell. The most complete Revere tea service known to exist, it includes one of only two tea caddies made by Revere.

1974

Mia opens a $30 million addition designed by architect Kenzō Tange, a Japanese modernist who designed Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The expansion includes 40 percent more exhibition space and connects Mia to the Children’s Theater Company.

1989

Director Evan Maurer announces that Mia is adopting a free-admission policy, harking back to its 1911 agreement with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board to insure accessibility for residents of Mia’s Whittier neighborhood.

1992

Mia acquires Jade Mountain, one of four eighteenth-century jades commissioned by China’s Emperor Qianlong. It is the only work remaining in Minneapolis from the personal collection of lumber baron T. B. Walker, founder of the Walker Art Center.

1994

Mia opens four new galleries featuring “Art of the Americas.” Highlights include gold ear spools from ancient Peru, a nineteenth-century beaded Lakota wedding dress, and a wooden Yupik ceremonial mask.

1998

Twenty-two galleries of Asian art open, including two complete Chinese rooms and a rare seventeenth-century marble screen. The expansion, largely funded by Bruce and Ruth Dayton, includes art from China, Japan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia.

2000

A museum visitor, ignoring do-not-touch signs, sits on and breaks a $500,000 Ming Dynasty chair. No charges are filed. Repairs take more than a year to complete, but the chair is reinstalled—with rope barriers and electronic sensors.

2006

Target Wing opens. The approximately $50 million renovation and expansion bring 40 percent more exhibition space.

2015

The museum rebrands, changing its name to the Minneapolis Institute of Art (not “Arts”) and dropping the acronym MIA in favor of the nickname “Mia.”