Jamie Yuccas Leads Tours At MIA For 100th Birthday Celebration

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- For its 100th birthday, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is offering a surprise a week!

On Friday, we have a big announcement about the No. 14 out of 52 surprises: Jamie Yuccas is hosting a tour on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.

Kay Miller is a Docent with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Docent means teacher.

"We deal with all kinds of people across the board -- kids and people on memory tours," Miller said.

Miller knows her stuff. She and other volunteers help more than a half-million people visit the museum each year.

Yuccas asked her: "What is your favorite type of art?"

"Everything," Miller said, "For this reason, you think you don't care anything about South American Art and then you start discovering the Nazga culture and you think: 'this is my favorite kind of art.'"

The MIA's permanent collection has grown from 800 works of art to more than 83,000 objects.

"You're going to help me, right?" Yuccas said.

"That's actually perfect, because the fact of the matter is, most people don't know about the facts, they just know they like it or something appeals to them," Miller said.

So, it was tough for me to widdle down to just a few stand-out pieces I want to talk about on my tour.

But "Your Dog" did make the cut because of its size and fun red nose.

Yuccas picked out about a dozen others, too, and while I'm a little nervous about the selections, Miller put her at ease.

"Tell people what you love and why and that is enough," Miller said.

If you'd like to join Jamie's tour, just come to the Minneapolis Institute of Art this Saturday.

The tour will start at 2:30 pm. It's free and no reservations are needed.