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The Creative Process
Five Models and Their Artists

The relationship between artist and model is often personal and complex—and it can add depth and power to a work of art.

A grid of 31 abstract black-and-white images in white frames. One image sits below the 5 X6 grid in its own row in the leftmost corner.

Inside the Exhibition
Releasing Language with Kameelah Janan Rasheed

The artist shares the thinking, questioning, and experiences that take shape in her Art Institute installation, Unsewn Time.

Black print on cream-colored paper of a skeletal dog, ribs and other bones laid bare while some portions remain opaque. The lower-left portion of the image has been torn off entirely, as has the upper-right corner.

From the Conservation Lab
Hidden Care: Four Stories of Patience and Repair

The conservation of works of art happens behind the scenes and at its best is something you don’t even notice.

From the Conservation Studio
Predicting the Damages of Light

Using new technology, conservators can predict how long a work on paper can safely be exhibited and exposed to light.

On a turquoise-blue background, the image of a white and black table-like shape, rendered in three dimensions with various intersecting two-dimensional shapes, repeats regularly in various sizes, rotated to various different angles.

Inside the Exhibition
Dan Friedman’s Radical Transformation

Inspired by modernist ideals and the East Village art scene, he turned away from corporate branding to embrace a fun-loving and deeply progressive spirit of design.

The Creative Process
What You Don’t See: Meditating on Korean Monochrome Painting

Meet three Korean modern artists for whom painting is a deeply spiritual practice.

Painting of three opulently dressed men seated around a cloth-covered table playing cards. The man at left is baby-faced and wears a wide-sleeved velvet top with lace ruffles at the wrists. He stares at his cards placidly while the young man across from him, whose back is largely toward the viewer and who wears a dominant feather in his hat, leans forward with an expression of alarm and pulls a card from a hidden pouch at his back. A third man, a bit older, wears gloves with holes at the fingertips and bends toward the first man, conspicuously reading his cards.

Inside the Exhibition
Caravaggio’s Dramatic Life and Paintings

The artist’s dynamic and highly influential work, like his biography, contrasts darkness and light.

Photograph of a young light-skinned man with short black hair sitting on the floor of an art gallery holding a sketchpad, his back partially toward the viewer, as he looks toward a painting of a woman in blue.

Top 10
Our Fall Favorites

Looking to spice things up with creative activities, imaginative artworks, or just a really good chicken sandwich? It’s all here.

Exploring the Collection
Bureaucratic Collage: Ghosts in the System

Sometimes art unexpectedly results from our desire to refine and organize information.

Painting in loose brushstrokes of a line of closely packed buildings along the horizon with many sloping roofs in bright orange. Before them an expanse of overgrown, yellow and green grass waves in the wind. Beyond, multiple slim smokestacks rise into a gray and pale-turquoise sky.

Inside the Exhibition
Finding Inspiration in the Tensions of Modernity

In the 1880s the new mix of industry and nature in the evolving Parisian suburbs prompted Van Gogh and his contemporaries to experiment with radical painting approaches.

Close-up photograph of a large hanging textile made up of many woven squares and rectangles in shades of blue, gray, and white separated by multiple neutral-toned ropes woven together at their junctures.

Anatomy of a White Dwarf: On Life, Home, and Weaving

For artists María Dávila and Eduardo Portillo, the world of each textile contains multitudes.

Perspectives
Dancing with Cecilia Beaux

Looking deeper into a painting can reveal more mysteries than it solves.

A black-and-white photo shows the artist crouching next to his partner, Françoise Gilot, and smiling at their 4-year-old daughter, Paloma, who sits in a small wheelbarrow smiling back at her parents while their 6-year-old son, Claude, sits on a tricycle on the other side of father, smiling at the camera.

Inside the Exhibition
Inspiring Picasso

Meet a few of the people—a friend, a printer, an art dealer, a romantic partner, and two children—who impacted the artist and his work.

Leaders of Tomorrow
Curious about Curating? Your First Stop: The Andrew W. Mellon Summer Academy

Collection Spotlight
An Extraordinary Sunday: Sondheim and La Grande Jatte

It’s Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday. Celebrate with a look at Sunday in the Park with George and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884.

Collection Spotlight
Man of Sorrows by Marion Perkins

“This head of Christ,” the artist said, “is an acid test of American democracy.”

Photograph in a gray art gallery of a large glass case with two large vessels in orange and black inside it, a podium with an iPad display at right.

Behind the Scenes
What’s in a Case?

Curator Lorien Yonker goes beyond the glass to share some of the unseen ways our cases help protect the art within them.

From the Conservation Studio
The Cycle of Destruction and Repair: Conserving a Thanjavur Painting

After undergoing extensive as well as inventive conservation, this beautiful rendering of Shiva Nataraja and his attendants is now ready for public view.

FAQs
Museum FAQs: Are the Artworks Real?

This is the first in a series where we apply an answer to one of your many FAQs.

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Inside an Exhibition
Four Chicago Artists Walk into a Museum

And what they find helps to develop and refine their personal artistic visions.

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