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6 artworks from 6 artists across 6 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.

See a selection of works in our collection that have become our visitors' faves.

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  • Miniature dining room with dark wood floors, dark wooden furniture, walls decorated with floral paintings.

    A20: Virginia Dining Room, 1758

    Narcissa Niblack Thorne

    Gallery 11, lower level, Thorne Miniature Rooms

    The wallpaper in this room is perhaps its most elaborate element. In her study of interior decoration sources from the 18th century, Narcissa Thorne learned of the taste among Americans and Europeans for imported Chinese wallpaper. The walls in this space are covered with a hand-painted pattern of birds, trees, and flowers produced in the same manner as the full-scale wallpapers from China 150 years earlier.

    "In the 1930s, Thorne assembled a group of skilled artisans to create a series of 68 intricate rooms on the minute scale of 1:12. With these interiors, she sought to present a visual history of interior design that was both accurate and inspiring."

  • Dark stone sculpture of Buddha sitting cross-legged, hands in lap, eyes closed.

    Buddha Shakyamuni Seated in Meditation (Dhyanamudra)

    Gallery 140, first level, Arts of Asia Galleries

    Seated in a posture called the lotus, this serene 12th-century Buddha rests his hands and feet atop one another as he gazes downward, his eyelids lowered, the touch of a smile on his lips. The symbols that distinguish him as a great being—such as the urna on his forehead and ushnisha on top of his head—are delicately carved in the hard granite.

    "This Buddha comes from the south Indian coastal town of Nagapattinam, where Buddhist monasteries flourished and attracted monks from distant lands."

  • Dark colored sculpture of muscular man standing in a contorted pose.

    Adam

    Auguste Rodin

    Gallery 200, second level, Arts of Europe: Painting and Sculpture Galleries

    Auguste Rodin's figure of Adam was originally intended to be paired with a sculpture of Eve to flank his monumental bronze portal, The Gates of Hell, for the Musée de Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Rodin created over 200 of its figures and groupings, exploring the expressive potential of the human body. However, the museum building was never constructed and the portal never completed as originally conceived.

    "At the beginning of the 20th century, Rodin was the world's most famous artist. A master of visual communication, he created sculpted bodies that speak to us through carefully constructed gestures and poses and in the tactile surfaces of their materials."

  • Large painting of people in a crowded park, brushstrokes are dots.

    A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884

    Georges Seurat

    Gallery 240, second level, Impressionism Galleries

    For his largest and best-known painting, Georges Seurat depicted Parisians enjoying all sorts of leisurely activities—strolling, lounging, sailing, and fishing—in the park called La Grande Jatte on the River Seine. He used an innovative technique called Pointillism that was inspired by optical and color theory, applying tiny dabs of different colored paint that viewers would see as a single, and Seurat believed, more brilliant hue.

    "Seurat sought to evoke ancient Egyptian and Greek art's sense of timelessness. He once wrote, 'I want to make modern people, in their essential traits, move about as they do on those friezes, and place them on canvases organized by harmonies of color.'"

  • Painting of mother in blue, purple, and green-stripped dress washing child's feet.

    The Child's Bath

    Mary Cassatt

    Gallery 273, second level, Arts of the Americas Galleries

    Known for her sensitive yet unsentimental scenes of women and children, Mary Cassatt was the only American invited to exhibit with the original French Impressionist group. In The Child’s Bath, one of her masterworks, she used cropped forms, bold patterns and outlines, and a flattened perspective, all of which she derived from her study of Japanese woodblock prints.

    "This is a tender portrayal of familial closeness, a subject that Cassatt explored throughout her career. The caregiver’s cheek brushing the child’s shoulder, her encircling embrace, and the child’s hand on her knee suggest the pair's emotional bond."

  • Four distinct motifs, each abstract, colorful, and cartoonish, float sequentially, one on top of the other, against a shiny, black background. One looks like an expanding galaxy. The top one, a figure, has a squat body and a pointy head and is grinning.

    Mr. Pointy

    Takashi Murakami

    Gallery 295, second level, Contemporary Galleries

    Takashi Murakami skillfully mixes Japanese pop culture, animé, and cartoon aesthetics into a new form of global pop art. Both an artist and a businessman, he creates large-scale paintings and sculptures, animation, and merchandise, including a fashion collaboration with Louis Vuitton. The character of Mr. Pointy was devised by Murakami in 2003 and has since been repeatedly rendered in paintings, mass-market prints, and sculptures.

    "Murakami's Mr. Pointy character combines religious iconography taken from sources as diverse as Mayan culture, Tibetan Buddhism, and the Thousand-Armed Buddha (Kannon in Japanese) with a cartoon style informed by sources including Walt Disney."

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