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A Black family of four rests together in bed against a seafoam-green wall while reading a newspaper. They are all under seafoam-green and teal blankets except for the baby, who is nestled in a white bassinet adjacent to the mother, whose arm reaches out from behind the paper to tend to the child. Between the mother and father, who are both obscured by the papers, a young boy turns his head to look at the paper his father is reading.

Inside the Exhibition
In the Room with David Goldblatt

One family’s morning in bed offers a window into South African life under apartheid—and a photographer’s efforts to reckon with its legacies.

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.

A sculpture in smooth white marble featuring three nude women standing together, their arms draped around each other.

Inside the Exhibition
From Rough Clay to Polished Marble: A Close Look at Canova’s Process

Follow along, step by step, through the creative and technical stages behind the artist’s finished sculptures.

Collection Spotlight
Buddha Shakyamuni: A Curator’s Insights

We asked curator Madhuvanti Ghose to shed some light on one of the most popular works in our collection.

Image of poisonous fountain in Dead Time

Inside an Exhibition
Making a Murderous Drinking Fountain

There we were, the eight of us, noses up like hunting dogs, sniffing the air for that chlorine smell.

A young medium-skinned man squats as he puts his hands down on an irregularly shaped woven work on the concrete floor of an interior space.

Inside the Exhibition
From the Studio to the Parking Lot to Chicago: On Igshaan Adams’s Desire Lines

On its journey to the Art Institute, Adams’s massive floor work—a woven map of the lived experience and physical terrain of his South African hometown—grew out of Cape Town and returned to it.

Inside the Museum
The Road to the Block Party Is Wide Open

Pitch us your idea for a chance to join the party!

Art Institute Michigan Avenue building before the lionsons

Museum History
125 Years on Michigan Avenue: The Early Years

For 125 years, the Michigan Avenue Building has been the heart of the Art Institute’s success and very much in the heart of Chicago.

A light-skinned woman with wavy brown hair, prominent gold dangling earrings, and a blue suit jacket—Nora Gainer—sits before Seurat's "La Grande Jatte."

Meet the Staff
Nora Gainer, Executive Director, Civic Relations and Partnerships

A world traveler, Nora has always been most at home in Chicago, where she works to deepen ties between the city and the museum.

Photograph of Patrick Thomas, in gray working clothes and a cap, standing among green foliage.

Meet the Staff
Patrick Thomas, Landscaping and Grounds Foreperson

It’s the perfect time to get to know Patrick and his green thumb.

A large ceramic vessel with a wide open mouth and two small handles is inscribed at the top and glazed in brown with green petal shapes overlapping at the bottom and spots of bright orange.

New Acquisition
David Drake’s Storage Jar

A celebration of artistry, resistance, and the power of objects to reveal histories, this inscribed and beautifully glazed ceramic jar by the enslaved artist David Drake joins our galleries this spring.

Collage of images from the 1960s featuring soldiers in Vietnam, Jim Crow laws, the Great Migration, protest, and violence against African American youth.

New Views of History
Immigration, the Civil Rights Movement, and my existence

The author explores how the hard-fought civil rights victories of the 1960s enabled his parents to immigrate here and start a family.

Exhibition Audio Tours
Chicago Seen and Heard

Inside the Exhibition
12 Things to Know About Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection

Go back in time and behind the scenes for a closer look at this illustrious collection, which makes its North American debut this spring.

A person sits at a table in a study-like room stringing objects—flowers, leaves, vegetables, crystals, scraps of paper with mathematical equations—onto a three-dimensional musical staff. Figures emerging from the wall do the same, while the floor's tiles come loose, drawers overflow, and birds nest in the back of a chair.

Inside the Exhibition
The Dueling Dualities of Remedios Varo

Discover the diverse techniques and seemingly incompatible fields of knowledge the artist used to create her endlessly enchanting paintings.

Meet the Staff
Jonathan Mathias, Senior Photographer

Get to know the man behind the camera, whose images of the museum’s artworks reach virtual visitors across the globe.

Three objects float against a white background. On the left is a multi-colored beaded stool, the supporting form of which is shaped like a cat. In the center is a red-colored mask of a woman with her eyes closed, facial decoration, bugle-shaped earrings, and a full head of short dark hair. On the right is an abstracted wooden figure with wide eyes and a long neck.

Exhibition Preview
African Beauty through African Eyes

This fall’s major exhibition devoted to sculptural arts across the African continent focuses on how the originating cultures of these objects view, value, and talk about their art.

One Theme, Multiple Voices
Egyptomania in Ancient Rome and Gilded Age America

From ancient Rome to 19th-century New York, the use of ancient Egyptian motifs demonstrates the influence of the illustrious North African culture.

Perspectives
The Solace of Chinese Celadons

Curator of Chinese art Colin C. Makenzie finds comfort in the simple elegance of these pale green ceramics.

Dorothea Lange's photo Plantation Owner, Mississippi Delta, Near Clarksdale, Mississippi, which shows a white man with his foot on the bymper of a car and behind him, a group of African American men

Perspectives
Dorothea Lange’s Plantation Owner: Context Is King

The same photograph appears in three publications and tells three different stories.

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