I couldn’t find a press release on the museum website about this, but a couple of newspapers recently reported that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is changing its name. And I did find, on the website, an item in “Mia Stories”— its direct to consumer communication.
From now on, there will not be an “s” on the end of arts. It is simply the Minneapolis Institute of Art. And from now on, the acronym should no longer be pronounced as M-I-A, as in “missing in action.” It should be pronounced “me-ah”–rhyming with DIA, the New York-based art foundation, and not with DIA, the Detroit Institute of Arts.
This is going to take awhile. People and publications will now have to remember that in Detroit, there’s an “s.” But in Minneapolis, no. I expect a lot of mistakes and corrections.
For MIA, this is understandable–and to a certain extent, welcome. For me, dropping the “s” suggests more attention to visual arts, and less emphasis on all the other arts, like music, dance, and theater. that sometimes find a home in art museums. Nothing wrong with the latter, but I prefer the emphasis on the visual. Still, I may be disappointed on that score. The museum recently posted on its Facebook page about a “August musician-in-residence” named Lydia Liza, the lead singer of a local band, Bomba de Luz.
And here’s what MIA said in the “Mia Stories” post:
The “Arts†in the name was deliberately and ambitiously plural, inscribing the vision of the institute as a place for performing as well as visual arts. The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, now the Minnesota Orchestra, was to be housed alongside the museum, ballets and plays were to be performed. The original architectural designs offered plenty of space—designs that were never fully realized.
So much the better, I think.
The current change was made in consultation with Pentagram, the design firm in New York that has worked with dozens of arts organizations, including the Whitney and the Philbrook Museum. The MIA also acquired a new logo, at left, and has dumped the old one, at right. Here’s what MIA says about that as well as the pronunciation:
Mia, on the other hand, means “mine†in Spanish and other languages, and, as the new logo designed by Pentagram demonstrates, readily establishes a complete identity apart from the initials. Mia will now be the common name of the museum, while dropping the “s†in Arts simply resolves a bit of history. No one needs to worry about the vision behind this place anymore, set in stone for a hundred years now, only how to reflect it in words.
But there is one thing to resolve: the museum’s URL is www.artsmia.org. Â When I plugged in www.artmia.org, I got nothing.
Sometimes these rebranding exercises are trivial pursuits, tinkering when the focus should be on more important things. They can also be very expensive.
MIA did have a bit of a problem with its nickname, so this one seems warranted. I notice, for now at least, that museum’s mission has not changed:
The Minneapolis Institute of Art enriches the community by collecting, preserving, and making accessible outstanding works of art from the world’s diverse cultures.
Well-put, as its the vision statement: “Inspiring wonder through the power of art.”
That’s a proper focus.