History:

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) is a fine art museum located in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a campus that covers nearly 8 acres (32,000 m²), formerly Morrison Park. As a major, government-funded public museum, the Institute does not charge an entrance fee, except for special exhibitions, and allows photography of its permanent collection for personal or scholarly use only. The MIA features an encyclopedic collection of approximately 80,000 objects spanning 5,000 years of world history. Its collection includes paintings, photographs, prints & drawings, textiles, architecture, and decorative arts. There are collections of African art and art from Oceania and the Americas, and an especially strong collection of Asian art, called “one of the finest and most comprehensive Asian art collections in the country”.The Asian collection includes Chinese architecture, jades, bronzes, and ceramics. The institute owns the Purcell-Cutts House just east of Lake of the Isles. The house was designed by Purcell & Elmslie and is a masterpiece of Prairie School architecture. It was donated to the museum by Anson B. Cutts Jr., the son of its second owner. The house is available for tours on the second weekend of each month.