Following Indigenous modes of curation, a museum upends the usual narrative of Native art — By Juan Lucero and Jill Ahlberg Yohe It was time for a change. We knew it. The museum knew it. The world knew it. Recently, we changed the Native Art galleries at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In our hearts and minds, as curators during this time of reckoning for…

A photographer reflects on portraits of Ukraine — By Tim Gihring In 1997, Katherine Turczan began showing a series of photographs she had made in Ukraine. …

She was one of the world’s most famous artists. But it was the spirit world that truly called to her. — By Tim Gihring One morning, in the 1850s, Harriet Hosmer wakes up and senses someone in the room. It’s 5 o clock. She’s sleeping behind a tall screen that wraps around her bed. The doors to her room are locked. She asks if anyone is there. And suddenly someone is…

For years after World War II, the Jewish genocide was ignored, forgotten, or misunderstood. What changed? — By Tim Gihring Rachel McGarry remembers the moment she began to understand the Holocaust. It was 1981. She was a kid turning cartwheels in a friend’s suburban basement, with the television on. Suddenly, a woman onscreen began recounting her imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps. “It was gripping,” says McGarry, who…

Can wacky, waving, inflatable tubes help explain climate science? — By Tim Gihring Aaron Dysart has long admired scientists — the way they see the world, and how they explain it. “I adore science,” says the Minneapolis artist. “Artists and scientists are both trained observers, we just go about it really differently with really different outcomes.” Years ago, Dysart was…

It’s lasted nearly 700 years. Now a Late-Gothic masterwork should last even longer. — By Alex Bortolot In 1921, the collector Herschel V. Jones gave Mia an antiphonary, a manuscript of sung portions of the Christian Mass and the Divine Office, known as antiphons. It was created in 1439 and used by a community of nuns at the Congregation of Fontissalientis in northwestern Germany…

First shown to wide acclaim in the 1960s, the raw depictions of evil still have the power to shock — By Tim Gihring In May 1960, Adolf Eichmann was abducted in Buenos Aires by agents of Mossad, Israel’s secret service. …

Leslie Barlow’s Collaborative Portraits — By Keisha Williams Won’t You Celebrate with Me won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? …

A new museum exhibition explores the variety of expression under Islam — By Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers What is “Islamic” about Islamic art? Is there even such a thing as Islamic art? These questions are increasingly debated in the museum world and in academia. But they are not merely academic. Starting on September 2, the Minneapolis Institute of Art is opening two new “Islamic…