The Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a museum and school for the fine arts in 1879. Since then, the permanent collection has grown from plaster casts to nearly 300,000 works of art in fields ranging from Chinese bronzes to contemporary design, from textiles to installation art.
Adhering to our profession’s highest ethical standards and practices, we collect, care for, and interpret works of art across time, cultures, geographies, and identities. Learn more about the museum’s collection care and development practices.
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Curatorial Departments
From ancient to contemporary, the museum’s curatorial departments focus their expertise on their individual collections while collaborating to fill the museum’s galleries with a global perspective that spans time, place, and culture.
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Provenance Research
From ancient Chinese bronzes to contemporary art and from tapestries to photography, every object in our collection has its own unique story to tell.
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Loans
The Art Institute of Chicago receives many requests to loan works from our collection to institutions around the world. We must carefully assess each request we receive through a formal review process.
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Deaccession Policy
In order to continue to elevate the collection, the Museum periodically reviews its collection and, after careful consideration, may decide to deaccession and remove certain objects.
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Image Licensing
The Art Institute of Chicago offers free, unrestricted use of over 50,000 images of works in the collection believed to be in the public domain. Find image licensing information for copyrighted works.
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Open Access
The Art Institute of Chicago provides open access to the images, data, and source code of our website.
