Minneapolis Institute of Art
— a city's collection, kept free at the door.
Not only on a wall.
Minneapolis Institute of Art, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A neoclassical building on a low rise above 24th Street, with a wide front lawn and a columned portico that reads like a courthouse. Inside, more than ninety thousand objects across five thousand years: a Tang dynasty horse, a Doryphoros after Polykleitos, the Jade Mountain, van Gogh's Olive Trees. Admission is free. Locals call it Mia. People come on Sunday afternoons the way other cities go to church, and the period rooms on the third floor stay quiet long after the lobby has filled. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
The Minneapolis Institute of Art, known locally as Mia, occupies an eight-acre campus in the Whittier neighborhood about two miles south of downtown Minneapolis. The original neoclassical building, designed by McKim, Mead and White and opened in 1915, was expanded by Kenzo Tange in 1974 and by Michael Graves in 2006. The museum is operated by the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, founded in 1883, and admission to the permanent collection is free. The collection holds more than 90,000 objects spanning roughly 5,000 years.
The 1915 building is a textbook example of Beaux-Arts neoclassicism in Indiana limestone, with a hexastyle Ionic portico facing 24th Street. Kenzo Tange's 1974 addition added two flanking wings in stripped modernist concrete, and Michael Graves's 2006 Target Wing brought a third expansion in lighter stone and brick. The three architectures meet without forcing a single language, and the original façade remains the photographed face of the museum. The plaza in front faces Washburn Fair Oaks Park across 24th Street.
Mia is open Tuesday through Sunday and closed Mondays. Admission to the permanent collection is free; a small fee applies to most special exhibitions. The collection is organised across seven curatorial departments, from the Arts of Africa and the Americas to Decorative Arts, Textiles and Sculpture. Signature works include the Doryphoros after Polykleitos, the Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of Scholars at the Lanting Pavilion, van Gogh's Olive Trees, and a Tang dynasty pottery horse. Two on-site dining options and a gift shop are in the Target Wing, and the museum is on the Metro Transit E Line.
