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Originally established to focus on furniture, metalwork, ceramics, and glass, the department today is the largest and most diverse in the museum, with more than 10,000 works in all media from America and Europe, from the Middle Ages to the present.

Aside from the original 1915 building designed by McKim, Mead, and White, the MIA's best known example of architecture is the Purcell-Cutts House (1913), a Prairie School gem designed by William Purcell and George Grant Elmslie for the Purcell family. The house was bequeathed to the museum in 1985 by Anson Cutts, Jr., the son of the house's second owner. Located in the heart of Minneapolis, it is open for public tours on specific weekends.

Architectural fragments and furnishings by Purcell and Elmslie, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and George Washington Maher, and their contemporary architect-designers are presented in the Ulrich Architecture and Design Gallery in the museum. See Unified Vision: The Architecture and Design of the Prairie School for more.

An important recent gift is the Norwest Modernism Collection, comprising nearly 500 works in all media documenting salient components of six modernist movements, from Arts and Crafts (1880) through Art Deco (1950). Since its donation in 1998, the collection has supplied works in a series of exhibitions at the museum, at the Wells Fargo Center in downtown Minneapolis, and on the award-winning Modernism Web site.

Decorative arts are well represented by a foundation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English and American silver collection given by James Ford Bell featured in the Bell Family Decorative Arts Court. Many collectors and donors have contributed to the porcelain and pottery collection, which includes eighteenth-century French faience from Mrs. John P. Rutherfurd, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English delft from Mr. and Mrs. George R. Steiner, and Chinese Export porcelain from Leo and Doris Hodroff. Domestic interiors and furnishings spanning four centuries are presented in the Institute's nine period rooms, with a 1730 salon from the Hôtel de la Bouexière in Paris which has been restored with funds from the Groves Foundation. The rooms provide a context for objects and serve as the setting for the "Holiday Traditions" exhibition each winter.

Exhibitions of contemporary studio ceramics, glass, and wood are now staples. This initiative is thanks to generous donors such as Robyn and John Horn, who recently gave a substantial collection of turned wood, and Mrs. Eunice Butler, who has supported the acquisition of works by contemporary American ceramists. Sculpture from the Middle Ages to 1900 includes world-class works by Hiram Powers, Auguste Rodin, and a recent attribution to Gianlorenzo Bernini. Judaica and arms and armor also fall under the purview of the department, with recent gifts of religious metalwork from Harold and Mickey Smith and a sixteenth-century Italian half suit of armor acquired in 2001 with a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Wayne H. MacFarlane.

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