MINNEAPOLIS, MN.- In celebration of its 100th Birthday Year, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts today announced a fundraising campaign to acquire a new monumental outdoor sculpture that would reference the museum’s historic art collections and be a new masterpiece for the community. Created by the Polish-born artist Igor Mitoraj, the colossal bronze sculpture Eros (1999) will become an icon for the museum and for Minneapolis.

The MIA is raising funds from the community to purchase this handsome, mysterious, and poignant contemporary sculpture. Community members can contribute to this addition to the contemporary art collection by donating any amount to its purchase. It’s a chance to play a tangible and meaningful role during the museum’s centennial celebration. Eros will welcome visitors from its location in front of the museum, on the corner of 24th Street and Third Avenue South. The campaign goal is a minimum of $1 million to bring this work to the collection, and more than $300,000 has already been contributed. Donations large and small are happily accepted.

An internationally renowned sculptor, Igor Mitoraj (1944–2014) was raised in Poland, lived in France, and worked in a studio in Italy near the marble quarries of Carrara. Widely admired and exhibited in Europe, Mitoraj is lesser known in the United States. With the arrival of Eros, the MIA will become one of the few American museums with a sculpture of this scale and importance. Mitoraj’s work has been installed at the Venice Biennale; in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, England; the British Museum; the Boboli Garden, Florence; the Markets of Trajan, Rome; the Tuileries, Paris; and most recently, just before his death, in Pisa, Italy.

Mitoraj used the timeless artistic language of ancient Greece to address personal and contemporary issues in a new and original way. Eros (the Greek god of love), depicted here bandaged and marred by cracks, points out the contradiction between the ideals of strength and beauty, and the inherent fragility of the human condition. The post-modern monumental scale of Eros suggests the glories and failures of entire civilizations.