The Minneapolis Institute of Arts(MIA) showcases an exhibition "The Louvre and the Masterpiece", that has commenced on Oct 18th and will progress till Jan 10,2010. This ambitious traveling exhibition, which is the result of years of collaboration between Atlanta's High Museum of Art and the Musee du Louvre, covers 4,000 years of history and showcases some of humanity's great cultural treasures .It includes masterworks of sculpture, decorative arts, painting and drawing, which has been obtained from each of the famed French museum's eight collection areas.

Though the big names of art history are definitely well represented, the works in this exhibition aren't essentially the museum's most famous pieces. While there are a number of familiar pieces, there are also a reasonable number of modest treasures, even some amazingly persuasive forgeries, in the bunch. This collection of work has been collected to promote conversation on the very idea of the masterpiece.

Works are organized through the galleries to explicate three broad themes: the evolving historical and cultural definitions of what constitutes a "work of genius; issues of "authenticity and connoisseurship"; and the role played by changes in taste and scholarship over the years. Visitors are given the opportunity to appraise the merits of similar pieces side-by-side, and to see for themselves how curators have been fooled by and consequently unmasked fakes in their collection.