The Object

In 1852, Harriet Hosmer packs her pistol, her anatomy degree, and two pictures of a sculpture she made and moves to Rome. There, among other “emancipated women” in the expat colony, she becomes one of the world’s most famous artists. But it’s the spirit world that truly calls to her, the realm of the dead that she channels through clairvoyance and seances. So what happens when she answers? You can...

When Frida Kahlo dies, in 1954, she is soon forgotten. And then, suddenly, she seems to be everywhere: on magnets, puzzles, underwear, flip-flops. How did this remarkable artist become an international icon, an emoji, a figure of fervid devotion? And what does she mean to those who believe? You can see Yasumasa Morimura's "An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo," mentioned in the show, in the collecti...

They are illusions, no more real than someone being sawed in half onstage. Yet the veiled ladies that Raffaelle Monti sculpts in the 1800s are very real to him. Poignant symbols of an identity he’s forced to conceal, even as they make him famous. To launch Season 3, it’s a story of pride and prejudice and dreams just out of reach. Here you can see Monti’s Veiled Lady, c. 1860, in the collection of...

When the young Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani moves to Paris, in the early 1900s, he soon meets a very talented (and very married) Russian poet. What happens when art and love come together, as the rest of the world is falling apart? You can see one of Modigliani’s iconic Head sculptures here, from the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1502/head-...

As the page finally turns on 2020, enjoy this bonus episode on the New Year's illustrations made by Winslow Homer for Harper's Weekly magazine in 1869. At a moment surprisingly similar to our own, the American artist captured something of the feeling then, even as his life--and art history--was about to change forever. You can see the illustrations in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of...

Mermaids had been surfacing in art for thousands of years when, in the 1880s, Edward Burne-Jones began painting them as avatars of a radical new female identity in the corseted Victorian era. A story of desire and danger as legendary as the creatures themselves. You can see one of Burne-Jones' early mermaid paintings, "A Sea-Nymph," at the Minneapolis Institute of Art: https://collections.artsmia....

Artists have captured unicorns for thousands of years, and for most of that time people thought they were both magical and real. What can an imaginary creature tell us about ourselves? What did we lose when we stopped believing? And why do we still love them anyway? You can see unicorns in art through the ages in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, including this tapestry from the...

From narwhals to nautilus shells, dragon eggs to mermaid hands, the obsession with oddities in the Age of Discovery may seem, well, odd. But did the study of outliers, in the early version of museums, help make us the rational creatures we are today? See the nautilus shell cup from this episode here: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/111675/nautilus-shell-cup-germany

The animalier artists love lions and tigers and bears — anything with teeth and no business being in Paris in the 1800s. No one more than Rosa Bonheur, the smoking, joking, pants-wearing painter who becomes a celebrity, the most famous female artist of her time, by embracing the very things men fear most. You can see one of her lion prints here: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/10491/royalty-at...

A mysterious stone sculpture, supposedly found in Mexico, is hailed as a Chac Mool, the iconic Mayan vessel of human sacrifice. It tours Europe as a masterpiece of ancient Mesoamerican art. It's featured in magazines and books. But a surprising discovery suddenly begs the question: What is it really? See the Chac Mool for yourself here: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/17203/chacmool-maya

Simeon Solomon is a young art star in the Victorian era. But when scandal threatens his career, offering a cautionary tale to men like Oscar Wilde, he must choose between his livelihood and his identity. Incredibly, Mia has two works by Solomon in its collection, acquired in the 1960s when Solomon had been all but erased from art history. You can see them here: https://collections.artsmia.org/sear...

Long before Vincent van Gogh died young, poor, and under-appreciated, artists had gotten the message: you have to suffer for your art. But where did this template of the starving artist come from? And is there any truth to it or is it a myth, a romantic misreading of how great art is made? Here's Vincent van Gogh's "Olive Trees," from 1889, a year before his death, when he was in treatment in St-R...

Yoshitoshi is poised to be the greatest artist of the Floating World, the semi-fictional universe of and style in old Japan. But when Japan opens to the West, in the 1850s, Yoshitoshi struggles to adapt. And the ghosts he conjures become colorful symbols of a vanishing way of life. If you're an anime enthusiast, a fan of old Japan, or just into beguiling beauty wherever you find it, you're going t...

Elizabeth Catlett, the granddaughter of enslaved African-Americans, is a struggling artist at the height of Jim Crow. But when she moves to Mexico City in 1946, she finds love, inspiration, and eventually fame. There's just one catch: she can't come home. Check out her work in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/7890/sharecropper-elizabeth-catlet...

William Edmondson is a middle-aged laborer in Nashville, Tennessee, at the height of the Great Depression, when God tells him to carve a tombstone. Soon, he's the first African-American artist to have a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. But his short-lived celebrity reveals the art world's problematic relationship with race. You can see one of his many sculptures of a ram, of the Dorset sheep...

In 1666, Rembrandt painted a masterpiece that disappeared almost as soon as he finished it. Where it went, and what it meant to its various owners, is as fascinating as the question it begs: how can people be so tender and also so cruel?

He was the ideal man. Handsome, strapping, with unreal proportions. But ancient statues like the Doryphoros originally looked much different, a revelation that is slowly upending long-held assumptions about race and art in the classical world. And not a moment too soon to confront the dangerous claims of white supremacists. You can see a 3D model of the Doryphoros statue here: skfb.ly/6KZOH. You c...

Kehinde Wiley, long before he painted President Obama's official portrait, went to Brazil. There, he was inspired by a monument to the great aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, whose incredible, tragic life is as forgotten in the United States as it is celebrated almost everywhere else. You can see the monument here: https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/fotografias/GEBIS%20-%20RJ/rj39822.jpg And...

When World War II began, nothing seemed capable of slowing the Third Reich. Except a very fast, very unusual Czech automobile called the Tatra. A poignant story of poetic justice, grace in wartime, and the utopian future that wasn't.

Long ago, when everyone but your dog was a potential assassin, you needed to protect yourself by any means necessary. Starting with poison-proof silverware. A surprising story of art, myth, and the dangerous world that was.

In the 1920s, the sculptural image of Shiva Nataraja--the Hindu god Shiva as the cosmic dancer, ensuring the cycle of life--suddenly becomes a museum must-have. As India strives for independence, the image comes to symbolize something of the nascent nation itself.

An assistant curator decides to x-ray a 3,000-year-old mummy case, to learn if anything’s in there, and sees more than he bargained for. The international mystery would change his life — and the fate of the mummy.

When the frontier closed, the fate of Native Americans seemed sealed. But George Morrison, born into poverty near a reservation on Lake Superior, was as determined to be an artist as he was to avoid stereotypes.

Miriam McHugh Taney was a professional encyclopedia, lecturing on everything from the Italian Renaissance to early American furniture — a rare authority for a woman in the 1930s. But the real purpose of her museum talks went beyond knowledge.

There were wolves and caribou on the Minnesota frontier when John Scott Bradstreet arrived with his white suits and Far East fantasies of furniture, determined to elevate this outpost with fine interior design. A globalist mission on a collision course with history.