Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia)

The Minneapolis Institute of Art — known universally as Mia — is one of the great encyclopedic art museums in America, with a permanent collection of over 90,000 objects spanning 5,000 years of human art-making. The building itself is a neoclassical Beaux-Arts structure from 1915 (designed by McKim, Mead & White) with later additions, set on a tree-lined boulevard in the Whittier neighbourhood south of downtown.

The collection ranges from ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art through European old masters, Asian art, and American decorative arts, to 20th-century works. The museum mounts six to eight major special exhibitions a year. The surrounding gallery neighbourhood on Nicollet Avenue — Eat Street — is a convenient place for lunch or dinner before or after a visit.

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The collection includes Rembrandt's "Lucretia" (1666), one of the painter's last major works and the only Rembrandt in the upper Midwest. The Asian Art galleries are considered among the best in the country; the Japanese period rooms were acquired in the 1970s and include a complete 18th-century Japanese farmhouse interior reconstructed inside the gallery. Admission to the permanent collection is permanently free.