Search Results

The Art Institute boasts an outstanding collection of American Art—fitting for a classic American city. Find some of the icons below.

Responding to disproportionate racial and gender representation within Chicago’s modern and contemporary art scene in the 20th century, women seized the gap by forging their own spaces throughout the city. Learn about the history of placemaking in Chicago art spaces through selections from the Research Center’s Libraries and Archives. 

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.

Join in a civic celebration with this tour featuring works by Chicago artists as well as works intrinsically linked to our city.

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. 

Let your imagination take over on this journey through the Thorne Rooms—miniature and, as generations of Art Institute visitors have found, wonderfully transporting.

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.

Throughout his career Picasso was a great student of art, borrowing liberally the forms and ideas he admired in works from various cultures and periods.

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?

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?

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

The Art Institute was the first museum in the United States to assemble a significant collection of modern art and to put it on permanent display. Today these holdings are among the finest in the world—enjoy highlights from this pioneering collection.

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.

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.

Every year we grow our collection with works that expand and deepen the stories we tell and the perspectives we share—across geographies, periods and cultures. Enjoy a few highlights of this past year’s additions.

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.

Chicago has long been a city that fosters and inspires artists, from students who are just starting their careers to acclaimed painters and sculptors. And the present day is no exception—the contemporary artists who call Chicago home make the city a vibrant community that welcomes creativity and big ideas. This tour, featuring a rotating selection of works created since 1990, showcases just a few of the many contemporary Chicago artists whose works are in the museum’s collection.

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. 

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.

From celebratory statues to intricate mosaic panels, art was created for a wide variety of functions and contexts during the centuries that the Roman Empire reigned. Explore a few highlights from the Art Institute’s collection of ancient Roman art here.