The Minneapolis Institute of Art

Today I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minneapolis Sculupture Garden, Loring Park, and a couple other places in downtown Minneapolis. 

I took a lot of photos of artwork in the museum, so I'll dedicate this blog post to the museum and create a second blog post to cover the Sculpture Garden and the other places I visited today.

On my way to Minneapolis, I stopped at the "Finnish Bistro Coffee & Cafe" in St Paul and ate one of their pulla rolls with lingonberry. Pulla is a type of Finnish cardamom bread. A pulla roll looks like a cinnamon roll, but it has crushed cardamom in the bread, and no cinnamon. I had a plain pulla roll yesterday and enjoyed it, so I tried one with lingonberry today. Both were delicious, but I liked yesterday's best because the cardamom taste seemed stronger without the lingonberry.

-- Minneapolis Institute of Art --

The Minneapolis Institute of Art has a lot of artwork that I liked, for various reasons. I took photos of some of the pieces, and will explain what I liked.

The speckled trout on this clay jar by Jodi Folwell are beautiful. She titled it "T'ah p-ah sa' was (Dad's Fish)" because it brings back childhood memories of her father, who liked to fish.

This next piece is actually a full-size coffin shaped like a lobster. It was created by Sowah Kwei, of Ghana. He titled it "Fantasy Coffin". It is made of wood, plaster, and acrylic paint. I also took a photo of his contact information, in case anyone reading this blog wants to commission a custom coffin. ☺

The museum has a Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room filled with Tibetan devotional obects collected by Alice S. Kandell. The room is setup as a meditation room.

Below is a Tibetan prayer wheel. Inside a prayer wheel is a tightly wound paper scroll with prayers written on it. As the person holding the prayer wheel flexes their wrist, the weight suspended from the wheel causes the cylinder to spin and symbolicly release the prayers to heaven with each revolution of the wheel.

I am used to seeing Buddhist figures having a big belly, but this Indian Buddhist statue of Indra, "King of the Gods", has a much slimmer physique. A placard says Indra was originally Hindu but is revered by both Hindu and Buddhists in Nepal.

This statue by Japanese artist Kondo Takahiro of a Buddhist holy man has very unusual texture. The piece is titled "Reduction 1". The "silver mist" glaze on the cobalt blue porcelain figure is in response to the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in 2011, and represents that the released radioactivity may "drench" the Japanese people.

I think the following two Japanese block paintings are beautiful. The first, titled, "Morning of Abuto", is by Yoshida Hiroshi. The second, simply titled, "Pansy", is by Tanaka Ryohei.

The following three facial paintings caught my attention. I liked the colors and the eyes in the oil painting titled, "Frankie", by Joe Solman. 

I was surprised how well the colors of green and purple work together to create the shadows in the following oil painting titled, "Portrait of Fanette Reider", by Morton L. Schamberg. I don't normally think of those colors when I think of a face.

I like the deep contrasts and stark facial features in the following oil painting titled, "Young Woman", by Alice Neel.

Something about the eyes and expression on this man's face caught my attention. The oil painting is titled, "Portrait of Diego de Agreda y Martinez de Tejada y Cabezon, 1st Conde de Agreda", by a Mexican artist.

I like this color screenprint, titled '"The Beautiful Ones" May Have Arrived', by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, because of the designs that seem to blend into each other. The girl's dress seems to blend into the quilt on top of the bed, and you have to look closely to see where one ends and the other begins.

The oil painting of a landscape scene with a carriage, titled "L'Avenue de Neuilly on a Winter Day", by Luigi Loir, is peaceful. 

The oil painting titled "Laksefiskere pa Nesoya (Salmon Fishers at Nesoya)", by Hjalmar Eilif Peterssen, depicts a relaxing pause in a day of fishing.

I like the way the colors emphasize the three wise men in the oil painting titled, "Journey of the Magi", by James Tissot. 

I also like the colors around the pheasants' necks in this oil painting titled, "Still Life with Pheasants and Plovers", by Claude Monet.

The following marble sculpture is simply amazing. The veil looks very realistic. It looks like the marble head has been covered by a cloth veil, but the veil is actually carved in the marble. The effect is totally amazing. The piece is titled, "Veiled Lady", by Raffaelo Monti.

I find the color and contrast appealing, as well as the flowing robes, in this statue titled, "Saint Benedict of Palermo", attributed to Jose Montes de Oca. Saint Benedict of Palermo was born in Sicily, and is the first Christian saint of African origin to be canonized in modern times.

The following 3-dimenional work, titled, "Partition 81", is quite captivating. It is an archival pigment print on photographic paper, cut and folded, by Christiane Feser. I took a photo of the complete work, and a closeup, taken at an angle, of some of the folded paper.

I am intrigued by how the artist drew the texture of the tree in the oil painting titled, "Banyan Tree", by Joseph Stella. The closeup shows the great detail he added to create the tree's texture.

The following oil painting, titled "Quiet Seascape", by William Trost Richards, simply reminds me of the beach. The scene looks so realistic that I feel like I'm back at the ocean and can hear the waves.

The style of this acrylic painting titled, "Lake Superior Landscape", by George Morrison, is a lot different than the above seascape, but I like them both. I like the bright colors and the abstraction in the Lake Superior painting below.

The next three oil paintings have regional significance to the Minneapolis-St Paul area. I like the shape of the tornado in "Tornado over St. Paul", by Julius Holm. The painting titled, "St. Anthony Falls as It Appeared in 1848", by Henry Lewis, shows how St Anthony Falls, here in Minneapolis, looked before the bridges and power station were constructed. The scene looks a lot different today! "Steamwheeler on the Upper Mississippi", by Ferdinand Richardt, is another nostalgic look at the mississippi river of yesteryear.

I took a photo of the Minneapolis skyline from the third floor window of the museum. I enjoyed the art museum, but I was ready to go outside after walking the three floors of the museum.

The following sculpture of a head is on the lawn outside the museum. It is titled, "Eros Bendato Screpolato", by Polish sculptor Igor Mitoraj. Eros is the God of Love. I don't know how to interpret it. You can draw your own conclusions.