Seeworthy: History of photography at the Institute of Art

From 1800s France to the 21st century, this compact history is drawn from the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The show is divvied up into four tidy themes — landscape, city/architecture, portraiture and documentary — but there's room for funkier stuff, too. American surrealist photographer Man Ray's "istan/islam" (1924), a rayograph print made by placing objects onto photos, sans camera, lights up the imagination with a wispy figure sprawled across a black square. Old-timey daguerreotypes circa 1850s remind of photography's early beginnings, and Jyoti Bhatt's black-and-white 1983 photograph of a cow in rural India suggests the widespread nature of the medium. A portrait of a mixed-race couple by Dawoud Bey brings the medium up to the present moment. (10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Wed. & Sat.; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thu.-Fri.; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. Free. Ends Feb. 17. 2400 3rd Av. S, Mpls. 888-642-2787 or artsmia.org)

alicia eler