Minneapolis Institute of Arts

My employer sponsored the Rembrandt exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, so employees got free tickets. So off we went on Sunday to the MIA, despite the girls' protests that "I only like museums where I can touch things" and "I think that sounds boring."

The line for Rembrandt tickets was really long and slow, so we decided to go through some of the galleries and come back for the tickets later. As promised, the girls didn't enjoy very much of it. They liked the period rooms, but otherwise found the older art pretty boring. They also don't like naked people or anything depicting anything scary, which is honestly quite a lot of the collection.

They were a little more taken with the more contemporary art, like this piece, Panda, by Takashi Murakami:

(another view and some further info on the artist here.)

Maisie was very interested in Cy Thao's work. We found a little video that told his story - born in Laos, escaped to a Thai refugee camp, immigrated to Minnesota, became a legislator for 8 years, and now an artist. The museum has 9 of his 50 paintings in his "Hmong Migration" series. She watched the video and looked at his paintings and said "He's really talented!" Yep!

We next found a please-touch art cart, with Native American items from the Pacific NW, that the girls liked. There was a doll, some beautifully woven fabric, jewelery, and other objects that they could handle.

They also really liked this installation by HOTTEA, letting go:

(more info on it here.)

Oh, how was the Rembrandt exhibit, you ask? Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. It had timed admissions and our tickets were for 2:00. But everyone pooped out and melted down and was basically done 45 minutes before that. I ended up giving our tickets to someone who was in line to purchase them.

So, oh well. It was a pretty hit-or-miss excursion, but all in all I think it was a success, even if we didn't get to see the Rembrandts. At least we did show the girls that the art museum isn't all boring.