When I go to a new city I usually make it a point to visit the city's main art museum and sometimes other museums as well if there’s more than one of significance. Minneapolis has two such lesser art museums in addition to its main museum The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

The Institute is a monumental Beaux-Arts style building that houses one of the largest art collections in the Midwest . I’ve heard it described as second only to Chicago in the Midwest, although I would not necessarily says it’s bigger and better than the art museums in Saint Louis, Kansas City, or Detroit. They’re all quite impressive by American museum standards. The collection is quite strong on paintings by European Old Masters as well as Impressionism and American art. Once in a while when I go to a museum there is a particular work that just hits me as especially meaningful. It probably has to do with the things taking place politically at the moment, but El Greco’s "Cleansing of the Temple" in which Jesus is portrayed driving the money changers out of the temple in Jerusalem deserves a fitting modern equivalent work of Christ cleansing the Congress of the lobbyists.

Minneapolis has developed somewhat of an artistic avant-garde reputation in both visual and performing arts. In terms of the visual arts that is best reflected in the Walker Art Center, a modern museum building situated next to the large Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in a park a short distance southwest of downtown . My expectation in visiting the Walker was for a museum of modern art, by which I mean art from the turn of the twentieth century onwards along the lines of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Walker, though, is much more about contemporary art and space for changing exhibitions of that “avant-garde” type work. I guess my tastes tend toward the conservative side. Much of what is exhibited as contemporary art is experimental and is not going to stand the test of time. And is my view, much of what is exhibited as contemporary art demonstrates very little artistic talent. I feel compelled to visit places like the Walker but usually tend to leave disappointed.

The third notable art museum in Minneapolis is the Weisman Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota. The Weisman supposedly displays a quite good collection of art, one of the more extensive ones for an American university museum. What the Weisman is most famous for, though, is not what’s in it but the building itself. Sometimes dubbed “The Baby Bilbao” for its strong similarity to architect Frank Gehry’s more famous work, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Weisman is all weird shapes of shiny metal and glass. Well, I’d like to believe it’s more about the building that its contents because I discovered when I arrived that it was closed to enable an exhibition change.