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Latin America spans two continents and comprises a multitude of cultures, while its arts span millennia and represent a world of artistic styles.

The museum’s galleries are continually changing as newly acquired works and loaned objects join our spaces and expand the perspectives and stories that we share.

With close to 5,000 works of art on view, how do you decide where to begin—especially as a family with different ages and interests?

In celebration of our longtime partner the Chicago Public Library and their 150 years of extraordinary service, we had eight museum staff members highlight artworks in the collection that tell unique stories about the people, culture, and artists of our city. We invite you to join this self-guided tour and experience these story-filled works in the museum—maybe it’s an occasion to create your own Chicago stories. 

This past year, a tremendous variety of new objects joined the Art Institute’s holdings, each with its own unique story. Here’s a look at some of the notable works acquired in 2022 that enable us to share a more expansive history of art.

The Language of Beauty in African Art includes over 250 objects from the continent across millennia—but how have contemporary artists in particular responded to those objects and traditions?

Spanning five thousand years, the Art Institute’s collection includes the major artistic traditions as well as the contemporary arts of China.

The exhibition Van Gogh and the Avant Garde: The Modern Landscape shows how Van Gogh and his contemporaries were drawn to the river Seine.

Between 1882 and 1890 Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand explored the landscape along the river Seine northwest of Paris.

Have some of our most popular works resonated with you? Would you like to explore further? If so, our curators are happy to suggest some lesser known works they think you might like.

Surrealists were fascinated by dreams, desire, magic, sexuality, and the revolutionary power of artworks to transform how we understand the world. Learn more with this tour of our internationally renowned collection of Surrealist art.

The Arts and Crafts movement originated in mid-19th-century England and gained momentum in Europe and the United States as a solution to the perceived ills of industrialization, mechanized production, and urbanization.

The Art Institute acquired its first work by a black artist—Henry Ossawa Tanner’s The Two Disciples at the Tomb—in 1906, the same year it was made.

The lions are decked in their evergreen wreaths, and the Neapolitan crèche is once again on display—the holidays have arrived at the Art Institute!

It’s easy to have a first reaction to a work of art. But what is revealed when we ask ourselves not only what we find beautiful or ugly, but also where those ideas come from?

Artist Bisa Butler and her husband, a longtime DJ, chose this selection of songs to pair with each of her quilts as well as other works from the museum’s collection, all of which are on view in Bisa Butler: Portraits.

Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander American (A/AAPI) artists continue to push the contemporary art landscape across a variety of media—architecture, design, installation art, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and textiles. 

From Cezanne’s time to ours, his work has been admired, debated, and oftentimes collected by fellow artists. This tour highlights works by artists—from Cezanne’s Impressionist contemporaries to artists working today ­who have looked to him as an inspiration and a critical touchstone for their own work. 

The Obamas not only selected two groundbreaking contemporary artists, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, to paint their portraits, but as president and first lady, they also showcased an inclusive art collection while at the White House.