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From the Conservation Lab
Art Scene Investigation: From Can to Canvas

Front view of a bronze-colored metal sculpture of a creature with the head of a curly-haired young woman, extended bat’s wings, and taloned claws. The figure looks down at a book in its lap.

New Acquisition
Sarah Bernhardt’s Self-Portrait as a Chimera

The famous actress was also an accomplished sculptor who above all fashioned her own celebrity.

Black-and-white photograph shows an assortment of three paintings in a room, one hung on the wall, one on the floor, and one on a small table at right.

Inside the Exhibition
The First City: Chicago Collectors and Monet

Collectors in Chicago, along with the Art Institute, were early champions of radically new artwork by a French artist named Claude Monet.

Inside the Museum
A New Design for the Alsdorf Galleries

A vibrantly colored and patterned quilt depicts three women from the hips up. The central figure looks directly at the viewer. The two women on her sides appear to be helping her in the final stages of getting dressed and adjust a shawl over her head.

Inside the Exhibition
Bisa Butler: The Shared Gifts of Influence

Discover the artists who have and continue to inspire Bisa Butler—not only because of their work and distinct vision but due to their unrelenting perseverance and passion.

Photograph shows people in an art gallery observing Pablo Picasso's large painting "Mother and Child." On a bench before the painting, a woman and an adolescent girl sit together, the girl's head resting on the woman's shoulder. A young boy gazes up at the painting, his back to us.

Top 10
Ways to Connect This Winter

Join us for holiday favorites, creative exploration, curatorial insights, and much more.

A carving in tan-and-white stone of the upper body of a pharaoh wearing an elaborate headdress

New Acquisition
Walter T. Bailey’s National Pythian Temple Fragment, Chicago, Illinois

An iconic piece of South Side history by a pioneering architect joins the museum’s collection.

Edward McKnight Kauffer, printed by Dangerfield Printing Company Limited. Flowers o' The Corn, 1920.

Inside an Exhibition
An American Artist in London

“I didn’t understand it. But I certainly could not dismiss it. I felt a kind of quickening.”

Large group sitting on stools in front of Georgia O'Keeffe paintings of the Southwest

Perspectives
Sharing Space: Here and Now

To activate a magnificent artifact beyond the constraints of its formal museum setting was a revelation for me.

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.

In the (Portable) Lab
The Traveling Conservator: Visiting Malangatana’s Studio in Mozambique

A paintings conservator describes the unique experiencing of preparing artworks for travel to Chicago.

Photograph of Leslie Wilson, a medium-skinned woman with short, curly black hair, beside a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows and wearing a tweed vest over a black shirt.

Meet the Staff
Leslie Wilson, Associate Director, Academic Engagement and Research

With a global perspective and outgoing manner, she guides and supports emerging professionals at every stage, from undergraduate internships to post-doctoral fellowships.

Color photograph of a series of potted plants in shadow on a dimly lit windowsill, the largest pot at left featuring bold horizontal white and blue stripes.

Inside the Exhibition
A Tenderness of Heart: Mimi Cherono Ng’ok on Connection and Image Making

With her photographs and debut film, the Kenyan artist aims to collapse the distance between object and viewer.

Exploring the Collection
The Trailblazing and Enduring Margaret McCurry

To become a working architect, Margaret McCurry had to forge a path through a profession that had been claimed by men.

New Acquisition
Elizabeth Catlett’s Head (Head of a Man)

This striking early-career sculpture by the artist, well-known for her distinctive prints, allows us to shine a spotlight on a second, vital facet of her practice.

A skyscraper with a prominent, illuminated Rose Window and golden roof at center is otherwise dark against an equally dark city night. The overall blackness is punctuated by tiny illuminated rectangles of windows at left and circles suggesting streetlights and headlights on a road that travels in perspective up the painting at right. To the right of the road are the even, gridlike gray windows of a sparsely illuminated office building.

Inside the Exhibition
Skyscraper Living: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Shelton Hotel

An unexpected move to a residential high-rise gave O’Keeffe a new perspective on nature and the built environment.

A woven textile in shades of brown, blue, and metallic gold. On a mud-brown background are a series of many small gridded square shapes. Each is coppery gold with a halo of blue behind it and many fine blue threads crossing the square laterally, all evenly spaced. Bisecting each square vertically is an unruly tuft of brown fiber.

Inside the Exhibition
The Alchemy of Weaving

Learn how contemporary textile artists from across the globe have advanced the ancient and seemingly magical practice of turning thread into cloth.

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.

From the Conservation Studio
Bugs, Seeds, and Surprising Conservation Needs

Our world-class conservators find solutions to problems and answers to questions in unexpected places.

G33045 Press (300ppi, 3000px, sRGB, JPEG)

Provenance Stories
Looted and Restituted: Matisse, Paul Rosenberg, and the Art Institute of Chicago

Follow the journey of Matisse’s painting Daisies from its theft by the Nazis to its permanent home in the Art Institute’s collection.

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