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ARTS: “Paris Couture” dazzles at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

  Stepping through the emerald green and gold…

Publisher’s Commentary: “A Work in Progress” Documentary by Robert Reich

The conversations we can have with each other are not about telling people what to think, but by creating more places to think together. More opportunities to explore the essential ingredients of collective health and personal fulfillment, and to ask what we owe one another as neighbors and citizens. This feels more consequential to me than the horse races, outrage, and gossip that so often define the media landscape.

Heid E. Erdrich: McKnight Foundation’s 2026 Distinguished Artist

“Listen to the city dreaming, calling us home in many languages,” she writes. “Listen to the city flowing, dreaming, moving toward its chorus, learning its multiple and singular voice.”

BOOKS AND ART: My “Like Water for Chocolate” Tour at Mia

The tour proposed the question: how can emotion be portrayed outside the confines of words?

What Dolly Parton Taught Me About Mutual Aid 

When I read of Dolly Parton’s recent death, the first thing I thought about was when I celebrated her birthday with hundreds of fellow Minnesotans in the heart of Operation Metro Surge.

In Chile, a Group of Women Embroider to Keep Memory Alive 

The Bordadoras have influenced my thoughts on the politics of memory, the power of textile art, and the significance of the space that a group of people gathered together creates.

BOOK & ARTS: My “Sea of Grass” Tour at Mia

As the book, "Sea of Grass," leaves readers with a new consciousness of today’s environmental struggles, the tour inspired by the book at the Mia is a reminder that anxiety about our earth’s future is nothing new.

Guided Cultural Tours Foster Community Connections

Visiting Somali culture in Minneapolis, a tour with the Minnesota Humanities Center.

Learning the History of “The Art Spy” Rose Valland

Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) offers several “Inspired by Books” tours. I attended two tours in July related to Michelle Young’s non-fiction book “The Art Spy,” which tells the story of the remarkable work of little-known heroine Rose Valland, a Paris museum employee who quietly kept track of the significant pilfering of valuable art by German for four years, noted where it was going with her photographic memory, and spent decades after the war helping to recover it. 

New Wadaag Commons Affordable Housing Community Opens With Public Art

A $500,000 investment was made in permanent public art that is integrated directly into the new Wadaag Housing development as a defining element of the space. The work features Somali, East African, Muslim-identifying, and women artists whose cultures shape the neighborhood.

Book & Art: Imagery and Reflections From Germany’s Transformation Under Hitler

This is the first of several “Books & Arts” compilations we can offer, thanks to underwriting from the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Travel through the exhibition about German art during the time of Hitler's rise and fall — accompanied by parts of a related book, "In the Garden of Beasts."

Northern MN: A Fashion Show in the Woods

A fashion show in the woods of northern Minnesota by Annie Humphrey