Date: Fri 16-Oct-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: JUDIR

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Minneapolis

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Minneapolis Institute Of Art Celebrates

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MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. -- The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has reopened,

highlighting the completion of an expansion that includes 33 new galleries and

increases exhibition space by more than 65 percent. The reopening is the

culmination of a ten-year program to revitalize the century-old institution.

Expansions of the 1915 Neo-classical McKim, Mead & White building enable 4,000

works to be on view, more than three times the number exhibited ten years ago.

Through unprecedented support from the Twin Cities community, totaling more

than $150 million in contributions, the museum has significantly broadened its

art collections and programs.

The reinstallation of the permanent collection focuses on the presentation of

the museum's expanded Asian and African art collections, which rank among the

top in the country; the extensive decorative arts collection; the collection

of European and American paintings; as well as expanded installations of

photography, prints and drawings, and textiles.

Highlights include four new period rooms, including two of the very few

residential Chinese period rooms on display in the United States -- an

original Eighteenth Century scholar's study and rock garden from the Ch-ing

Dynasty (1797) and a grand scale Ming Dynasty reception hall (circa 1600).

In addition to its strong collections of world art, The Minneapolis Institute

of Arts also is a leader in developing new technology and innovative education

programs.

One of the earliest successes of this ten-year project was the 1989

elimination of the general admissions fee, a cornerstone of director Evan

Maurer's program to eliminate barriers to community access. Since the

implementation of this policy, the museum has nearly doubled its membership to

more than 26,000 and increased attendance by 100 percent and remains today one

of the few museums in the country offering free admission.

Collection Highlights

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts' permanent collection of fine and decorative

arts from around the world spans more than 5,000 years and includes nearly

100,000 objects.

Renowned for its collection of Western classics, in recent years the museum

has strengthened its commitment to collection and displaying the art of

Eastern cultures. It now boasts one of the finest and most comprehensive Asian

art collections in the country.

A focal point of the reopening is the completion of 22 new Asian art galleries

featuring an additional 1,500 Asian objects on view. They include Chinese

painting, sculpture, furniture, jades, bronzes, textiles, ceramics and

precious metals, Japanese paintings, prints, screens, sculpture, ceramics,

Buddhist art, and Southeast Asian ceramics and sculpture. Individual galleries

are also devoted to Himalayan art, Indian art and the arts of the Islamic

tradition.

New installations will prominently feature highlights from the collection such

as the Walker jade mountain (Chinese, 1784), the stone Kuan Yin (Chinese, late

Sixth Century), a round back folding chair (Chinese, Sixteenth Century), and a

wooden Jizo Bosatsu (Japanese, Thirteenth Century). In addition to the Chinese

rooms, two Japanese period rooms -- a Tea House and a Seventeenth Century

reception hall -- will be added in 1999.

The museum's decorative arts collection encompasses Western decorative arts

from the Renaissance to the modern periods, including glass, furniture, silver

and ceramics, as well as original period rooms, including a section of Frank

Lloyd Wright's Francis W. Little residence from Deephaven, Minn., (1914) will

be installed.

Also on view are the re-installed European and American paintings from the

Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century including Rembrandt's "Lucretia" (1666),

Nicholas Poussin's "The Death of Germanicus" (1627), and Claude Monet's

"Grainstack, Sun in the Mist" (1891). The collection also includes some

important Twentieth Century sculptures, such as Brancusi's "Yellow Bird"

(circa 1912), Modigliani's "Head of a Woman" (circa 1910-14), and masterpieces

by Matisse, Manet, Picasso, Bonnard and Moore.

During the ten-year revitalization program, the museum has taken a new

approach to the re-installation of its Africa, Oceania and the Americas

collection, focusing on the geographic and cultural distinctions of each of

these areas rather than grouping them as primitive art. The museum's

collection of African art is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in the

United States, and the new African galleries accommodate more than 300 works

of art spanning nearly 4,500 years of culture from across the continent.

Twenty-five percent of these objects have never before been displayed in the

museum. The new galleries -- divided into areas for Egyptian, North Africa and

Sub-Saharan art -- feature rare and ancient works from Africa. Another new

gallery features ceremonial sculptures from the Pacific such as a pan-pipe

player and a delicate bird frieze from New Ireland.

The museum's collection of art representing the indigenous cultures of North,

Central and South America is displayed in four recently completed galleries

for the Arts of the Americas. Part of a national pilot program on museum

accessibility funded by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, institute

curators worked in collaboration with a Native American community advisory

committee to conceive the gallery.

Other permanent collection works on view include selections of photographs

spanning 1836 to the present; prints and drawings ranging from illuminated

pages to contemporary works; textiles from early Coptic weavings to

contemporary fiber art, including important Renaissance and late period

European tapestries; and the Harold and Mickey Smith Gallery of Jewish Arts

and Culture that will provide a permanent space for displaying the ritual

objects and other works that represent Jewish artistic and religious

traditions.

In addition to an ongoing program of exhibitions drawn from its permanent

collection, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts actively loans works from its

collection to other museums throughout the world, broadening the exposure of

works from the museum's collection to a national and international audience.

The institute has earned national distinction as a leader in developing new

technology to enhance the visitor experience and to broaden its audience

beyond the museum's physical walls. Twenty interactive touchscreen video

kiosks, developed by the museum's own technology department and installed

throughout the galleries, allow visitors to custom-design their tours. The

system combines photography, film, music, and biographic and geographic

information that provides an extensive context for the objects on view.

The museum has won numerous awards for media and technology including the

American Association of Museums Muse Award (1998) and the New York Festivals

World Medal (1996) and has become a national model for other institutions. The

museum was also the first in its region to make its collection and education

programs accessible on the World Wide Web through its site www.artsMIA.org. A

full program for visitor interactive audio guides also is being developed for

introduction in spring 1999.

Museum History

In 1883, The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, the city's first public arts

institution, presented its inaugural exhibition in the upper rooms of an

unfinished commercial building. By 1889, the society began exhibiting works in

a one-room gallery in the Minneapolis Public Library at Hennepin and 10th

Street, where it remained until financier Clinton Morrison donated his

ten-acre family homestead, Villa Rosa, on Third Avenue South and East 24th

Street, as a site for a new art museum building. The architectural firm of

McKim, Mead & White was retained to design the building, which opened on

January 7, 1915. The building expanded to include a new south wing, housing

the Pillsbury Auditorium, in 1926.

In 1974, the institute opened its expanded facility, part of a master plan by

Japanese architect Kenzo Tange for an arts complex that includes an adjoining

building for the Children's Theatre Company and a new building for the

Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

The current renovation and expansion by RSP Architects of Minneapolis and

Witcher Construction Company has increased the museum's space from 279,063

square feet to 342,669 square feet, adding galleries and public rooms behind

the original building, as well as state-of-the-art storage facilities, while

leaving the building's distinctive original facade intact.

A highlight of the expansion and renovation is the restoration of the original

Beaux Arts ceiling and skylight in the central gallery on the third floor,

which had been hidden by a 14-foot drop ceiling installed during a 1930s

renovation project. Artificial skylights have also been installed in the

European and American galleries that flank the central gallery.

As part of the expansion and renovation efforts, the museum has completed an

extensive landscape plan enhancing the institute's grounds that features a

Chinese rock garden with extraordinary stones from various gardens in central

China, inspired by the Ch'ing Dynasty (Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century) style.

In addition, two Chinese guardian lions recently acquired by the museum now

flank the museum's original entrance, heralding a new era of art presentation.