The Object

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.

After founding General Mills, the food and flour giant, James Ford Bell turned to preserving the America he knew and loved. A vision that was fast disappearing in the stampede of mass immigration — and may never have existed at all.

She was wealthy, single, and always in the right place at the right time. But when Lily Place was in Egypt during the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, her art collecting suddenly put her at the epicenter of a curious and powerful trend that was about to shape world history one last time.