History

Liu Tao left China with his wife and children in 1966 to escape poverty and the Cultural Revolution. He emigrated to New York City, where he found favorable conditions for developing his business skills. In 1970, he opened his own company, MIAM, an Asian food retailer specializing in Chinese soup and noodles.

Liu Tao's son, Min Tao, joined his father’s company in 1973, and in 1984, at the age of 34, he replaced his father as Chairman of MIAM.

At a 1989 MoMA retrospective, Min Tao discovered the work of Pop artist Andy Warhol. The event was such an aesthetic shock that it inspired him to begin building an art collection. He started to collect the pieces of the first Pop artists generation including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, among others. His quest turned quickly into a spiritual experience, then his interest turned into Minimalism art movement, with collecting artworks of Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Anne Truit and Frank Stella. He also get the opportunity to pursue masterpieces of Yves Klein, especially pieces of monochrome painting series. Min Tao’s art collection now contains thousands of pieces including paintings, photography, installations, videos, representative of the most important artists of contemporary art worldwide.

At the beginning of the new century, Min Tao turned MIAM the food company of his father into MIAM, a company devoted into the fabrication of artifacts and art products.