MINNESOTA INSTITUTE OF ARTS

The Twin Cities has a great art museum in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and on Friday, May 8, I spent a couple of enjoyable hours there taking photos both of the art and the architecture.

What caught my eye--and I'm sure everyone else's as well--was the museum's newest acquisition-in-process, "Eros," which is currently positioned outside the museum's main entrance.

The bronze sculpture stands 7 feet high and is stunning in its emotional evocation.  There's a haunting quality to the empty eyes.

And, yes, it has a backside as well.

I do enjoy shooting wall art, including the following beautiful Jewish stained glass window.

This window was positioned high on the wall, and the image exhibited a significant amount of perspective error when first shot.  However, I was able to rectify the lines in post processing.

But I find sculptures more interesting because they provide more choices in terms of depth of field.  And the museum offers a diverse collection, ranging from antiquities (obviously a fellow lefty),

to Native American,

to whimsical contemporary.

One of the sculptures was positioned in an atrium and I was able to shoot it from an upper level.

Although the museum doesn't include stunning architecture, it is well laid out and offers some pleasant symmetrical scenes.

As well as some asymmetrical ones, including this ceiling shot that I converted to a black & white.

I also liked this shot of a stairway.  The central feature is a cloth banner that had been suspended from the ceiling.

Then there was this mystery shot.

Give up?  It's a portion of a stylized tub chair, made from corrugated plastic, located in a casual cafe area on the museum's main floor.

Finally, one last look at the eerie Eros sculpture that I couldn't seem to get enough of.

What's even greater about the MIA is that admission is free.  What a bargain.

John