The Object

Big news! Tickets are now available for the next edition of The Object LIVE! Our hour-long live taping of The Object podcast on October 30, with very special guest Chan Poling of The Suburbs and New Standards, quizzes, and storytelling. All about the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, the joys of jazz and St. Paul, and maybe the proper occasion to wear an ascot. Which is quite possibly this show—it’s “Great Gatsby’s Ghost!” The day before Halloween—Thursday, October 30, at 7 p.m. at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Tickets are FREE but limited. Reserve your seats now by going to the tickets page on the Mia website, or follow this link: https://new.artsmia.org/event/the-object-live-presented-by-ameriprise-financial

And now, today’s episode:

In the fall of 1930, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera travel to the United States for the first time, welcomed as celebrity artists, ambassadors of an ancient and powerful Latin American identity. But as the months turn to years, can Rivera’s vision of one united Pan-America—and his marriage—survive the pressures of politics, fame, temptation, cultural differences, and scandal?

You can see examples of Diego Rivera’s work, and that of other modernist Mexican artists, in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art: https://collections.artsmia.org/search/Diego%20Rivera

You can see Rivera’s San Francisco mural “Pan American Unity,” discussed on the show, here: https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/pan-american-unity/

You can see photos of Frida and Diego taking San Francisco by storm here: https://www.kqed.org/news/11848986/inside-frida-kahlo-and-diego-riveras-life-in-san-francisco

You can see (and read) Kahlo’s heartfelt letter to Rivera from a San Francisco hospital (“Diego, mi amor”) in the collection of the Smithsonian: https://www.si.edu/object/frida-kahlo-letter-diego-rivera%3AAAADCD_item_739

Vienna in the early 1900s is a kind of paradise of power and beauty, the center of an empire that will seemingly go on forever. Only an eccentric young artist, who sees faces in trees and finds God in the forest, seems to understand the fall that is coming. A loss of innocence that will consume him—and much of the world.

You can see the work of Egon Schiele, Josef Hoffman, and the other artists, designers, writers, and philosophers mentioned in this episode in the new exhibition "Timber! Art and Woodwork at the Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire" at Mia.

Save the date: The next live taping of The Object podcast will be October 30 at 7 p.m. at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, absolutely free. Special guest and ticket info coming soon. Now, enjoy this encore episode about a story as old as life itself: things fall apart. But what really happened to all those ancient statues missing arms, legs, heads, and other appendages? And how have we come to treat them as normal—a normal way of seeing the classical age, like paintings of the Renaissance or black-and-white photos of the 1900s? Have they shaped a perception of the past as more remote, mysterious, and, well, broken than it really was?

See some of the battered artworks mentioned in this episode, including the Tiber muse, a Graeco-Roman torso, an ancient Egyptian figure, and the Venus de Milo.

Truth and fiction collide in two stories of museum life. One of a curator who goes missing in the 1950s. The other of a curator who finds himself in the aftermath of World War I, a life chronicled in diaries recently found inside a forgotten storage space. A life filled with beauty and tragedy and the redemptive power of art. 

Save the date: The next live taping of The Object is October 30 at 7 p.m. at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, all about the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the art of the Jazz Age. Guests and details coming soon!

Save the date: The next free live taping of The Object podcast will be October 30 at 7 p.m.! Special guests and ticket info TBA. Now, enjoy this encore episode about one of the largest jade sculptures in the world, a 640-pound mountain commissioned by the Chinese emperor. In 1901, in the ugly aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, it ends up leaving China—only to resurface on the dinner table of a lumber baron. It’s a story as old as stone: can anyone be king of the hill for long?

You can see "Jade Mountain Illustrating the Gathering of Scholars at the Lanting Pavilion," now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, here. 

The Renaissance, which began in Italy some 700 years ago, may be one of the last true ideals we have. It's this beacon of beauty and truth that led us out of the Dark Ages. It gave us Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. But the Renaissance was also extremely, delightfully weird. A story of what happens when repression recedes and freedom moves in—and how this strangeness gave us our modern world.

You can see some of the "weird" artworks discussed in the episode here. Then, if you're able, see them in person at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. 

Truth, beauty, transcendence. For millennia, people think they know the rules of great art. Then, in the 1950s, a guy named Bob breaks every one of them, declaring car tires and Coke bottles and entirely blank canvases part of his art—and, in turn, being declared the greatest artist of his time. As war gives way to optimism, is Robert Rauschenberg offering a weary world a new way of seeing, or is he simply, entertainingly, and quite lucratively bamboozling it?

Here, you can see Rauschenberg's 1970 exhibition at Gallery 12, atop Dayton's department store in Minneapolis: www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/archi…allery-12

Here's an iconic print, commissioned but ultimately rejected by Time magazine in 1969, acquired the following year by the Minneapolis Institute of Art when the museum held a major retrospective of his prints: collections.artsmia.org/art/7519/sign…-rauschenberg

And here's an incredible shot of a boat hauling Rauschenberg's massive canvas across Venice for the 1964 Biennale: www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/archi…-biennale

New episode! In the 1920s and ’30s, Mary Sully makes her way from Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota to New York City and then around the country, making surprising, delightfully abstract portraits of American celebrities: Fred Astaire, Shirley Temple, Amelia Earhart. “Personality prints,” she calls them, though the most intriguing personality they reveal might be her own. A personality and a story that challenges everything you think you know about Native America—and all of America—in the early 20th century.

You can see Mary’s “personality prints” the Minneapolis Institute of Art this summer. Photo courtesy of the Mary Sully Foundation. 

Kicking off Pride Month with a surprisingly epic encore episode about Grant Wood. In the 1930s, the Iowa artist is one of the most famous people in America. The mind behind "American Gothic"—the painting of the man, the woman, and the pitchfork. An artwork so celebrated and so curious it’s called the “modern Mona Lisa.” But as times change and jealousy spreads, Wood suddenly finds himself fighting for his life and livelihood, protecting a secret he hid almost everywhere but in his art.

You can see Wood’s quirky, nostalgic style in "The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover," in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of art.

Some see a tender self-portrait in "Sentimental Yearner," a drawing made for Sinclair Lewis’s "Main Street."

This second sold-out live show of The Object podcast was recorded with an enthusiastic audience at the Minneapolis Institute of Art on May 11, 2025—Salvador Dalí's birthday, with our special guest: musician and writer Dessa. Quizzes, performances, storytelling, curator conversation—it's all here, all about Dalí, Surrealism, wit in art, and of course the creation of his famous (possibly functional?) lobster phones.

A big thank you to Dessa, Mia's events and A/V teams, and Mia curators Galina Olmsted and Max Bryant. See one of the lobster phones in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and learn more about Dessa's work not involving plasticized sea creatures. Watch for more live shows to come and new regular episodes every month.