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My Museum Tour

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Chicago Connections

6 artworks from 6 artists across 5 galleries
The tour is ordered to begin from the Michigan Avenue entrance. If you are starting in the Modern Wing, simply do your tour in reverse order.

Take a tour of works intrinsically linked to the Windy City, or made by artists who call or called Chicago home.

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  • A work made of oil on canvas.

    The Song of the Lark

    Jules Breton

    Gallery 222, second level, Arts of Europe: Painting and Sculpture Galleries

    This painting by Jules Adolphe Breton was among the first to enter the Art Institute's collection when the museum opened in 1893. It quickly became one of the most popular paintings at the museum. By the 1920s, reproductions were hanging on classroom walls across the United States. In 1934, it was named “America’s Best Loved Picture” in a contest sponsored by the Chicago Daily News.

    "Song of the Lark is a favorite of actor Bill Murray. He claims it saved his life when he was still a struggling young comic in Chicago."

  • Painting of a small, dark room with grey doors, grey wainscoting, and white walls. A blue bed with four pilllows is against the back wall. A painting hangs on that wall.

    The Past and the Present

    Gertrude Abercrombie

    Gallery 262, second level, Arts of the Americas Galleries

    Chicagoan Gertrude Abercrombie painted deeply personal works, using objects, motifs, and references knowable only to herself and her social and artistic circle. This painting is a spare rendering of an apartment where she once lived on the South Side, while the framed picture on the wall depicts the pink rowhouse where she lived when she made the painting. It's a puzzle box of personal histories.

    "Although the room is precisely rendered, as if painted from direct observation, Abercrombie no longer lived there. When she made this work, she was living in the Chicago row house portrayed in the painting on the back wall."

  • An oil painting of a large, male African American figure who looks left into the distance. He holds his hand out towards the dark blue sky, and he appears to break free from a pile of rubble in the background.

    This, My Brother

    Charles White

    Gallery 262, second level, Arts of the Americas Galleries

    Charles White believed art could be a force in promoting equality for African Americans. This painting draws its title from a 1936 novel about a rural white miner who experiences a political awakening and joins the proletarian struggle against capitalism. White transformed the protagonist into a Black man who breaks free from a mountain of rubble, a hopeful image of the possibility of social change.

    "Like many artists of his generation, Chicagoan Charles White believed that art could be an influential force in the struggle to promote racial equality for African Americans. He stated, 'Paint is the only weapon I have with which to fight what I resent.'"

  • A work made of terracotta, red-figure.

    Stamnos (Mixing Jar)

    Chicago Painter

    Gallery 151, first level, Arts of the Greek, Roman and Byzantine Worlds Galleries

    Among the first objects purchased for the museum's collection, this ancient Greek jar was originally used to mix water and wine. Painted in the red-figure style (so called because the figures remain the natural red of the clay), this vessel portrays the women followers of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine. Remarkably this millennia-old vase retains its original lid.

    "The ancient Greek painter who painted this vase is referred to as the Chicago Painter because this work, long part of the museum's collection, showcases all the hallmarks of his style: calm, elegant figures and a soft, free form."

  • A work made of acrylic on plexiglas, in artist's painted frame.

    The Trogens

    Gladys Nilsson

    Gallery 289, second level, Contemporary Galleries

    A rare and important early example of reverse painting on Plexiglas, The Trogens reflects Gladys Nilsson's interest in the themes of hidden realities. The work recalls the iconic story of the Trojan horse from Homer’s The Odyssey, suggesting that artifice can belie true meaning and that things are not always as they appear.

    "In the mid-1960s Nilsson was a member of the Hairy Who, a group of graduate students from the School of the Art Institute whose unconventional exhibitions at the Hyde Park Arts Center on the city's South Side transformed the art landscape of Chicago."

  • Large black sculpture in the shape of Africa. The form is covered in gold chains, circular photographs or "medallions" depicting prominent African American figures, and other images and text. The sculpture hangs on a white wall. "

    Africa Restored (Cheryl as Cleopatra)

    Kerry James Marshall

    Gallery 295, second level, Contemporary Galleries

    Kerry James Marshall describes this work as “the shape of Africa reconfigured as a cubist sculpture.” The attached laminated images and texts refer to figures within the black freedom movement in America as well as to Egyptian iconographies championed by African Americans in the 1970s. Marshall adds new elements each time the sculpture goes on view, treating it as a living and continually evolving work.

    "Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall's Africa Restored formally references the nkisi nkondi, or power figures, of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Examples of such works can also be seen in the Art Institute galleries."

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