AS WE BID adieu to “The Louvre and the Masterpiece,” we want to celebrate its success with you. Nearly 95,000 people visited the exhibition, making it one of the MIA’s most popular shows. Warm thanks to the Musée du Louvre, the High Museum, U.S. Bank, and the many other national, regional and local sponsors, supporters, donors, and visitors to the wonderful exhibition. Thanks also to the speakers, the MIA staff, and the community for helping us present this opportunity to the people of Minnesota and beyond. It was a great success!

Two thousand ten promises to be another banner year. Our wildly popular “Foot in the Door Show,” presented only once a decade by the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP), goes up this month. This democratic, open show of works measuring a foot or less in any dimension will be on view from February 19 through June 13, and we’re expecting thousands of wonderful jewels by living Minnesota artists. (If you are reading this before February 7, you still have time to enter.)

In fact, we’re all talking about contemporary art these days. Curator of Contemporary Art Elizabeth Armstrong is spearheading some exciting new developments as part of the MIA’s commitment to art of the “now.” As she prepares for the exhibition “Until Now: Collecting the New (1960–2010),” we are beginning to encounter works by late twentieth-century masters and by international artists who are working today. The exhibition opens at 6 p.m. on Third Thursday, April 15, and remains on view through August 1. Works of contemporary art on loan from collectors and galleries will join selections from the MIA collection, which together will total close to seventy-five objects. Some will be placed in Target Galleries and others dispersed throughout the museum to give them art historical context. This latter group introduces a continuing program called “Art ReMix,” in which contemporary art is positioned among the permanent-collection galleries. The idea was pioneered late last year, when Armstrong hung the Kehinde Wiley painting of 2009 among baroque paintings and sculpture in the Shirley Fiterman Gallery, prompting an animated discussion. An accompanying comment book brought lots of your opinions and ideas to us, and we hope to add even more voices to the dialogue.

And while we’re talking about contemporary art, we invite you to see the latest edition of “New Pictures,” the multimedia photography exhibition program Curator David Little is organizing. This one features the experimental photographer Marco Breuer. Leave a post on the New Pictures blog; we love your feedback.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Kaywin Feldman
Director and President