The MIA possesses the versatility, imagination, and resources to qualify as a big-league museum in a major metropolitan area. They're on the circuit for blockbuster exhibits such as the recent "Eternal Egypt" collection and the landscapes of "American Sublime"; assemble noteworthy shows such as last fall's collection of more than 70 Picasso prints (60 percent of them owned by the MIA); and can descend from the rarified airs of high culture for odd inspirational gambits such as providing more than 1,700 Minnesota artists with a cubic foot of gallery space apiece back in 2000. That "Foot in the Door" show neatly supplemented the MIA's Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program, which since 1975 has given prominent space to local artists who decide among themselves who and what will be exhibited. And don't forget the museum's permanent collection, which features a quickly growing wealth of ancient art from Africa and Asia (check out the Chinese bronzes and jade in particular), paintings by Rembrandt and Georgia O'Keefe, and sculpture by Henry Moore, Matisse, and Modigliani.