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Explore the ways LGBTQ+ artists have expressed gender, sexuality, and identity in the vast world of queer culture.
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.
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.
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.
A constellation of exhibitions and events at the Art Institute and across the city that explore ideas around freedom, solidarity, and place from artists throughout Africa and the African diaspora.
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?
The exhibition Van Gogh and the Avant Garde: The Modern Landscape shows how Van Gogh and his contemporaries were drawn to the river Seine.
Driven by her long-standing interest in architecture, Barbara Kruger’s work is always contextual—informed by the specific site and moment of its presentation while also adapting to and experimenting with new technologies.
Cities—centers of human activity, growth, and creativity—have long incited imaginative responses from artists across time and place.
Latin America spans two continents and comprises a multitude of cultures, while its arts span millennia and represent a world of artistic styles.
Whether a painting, photograph, print, or sculpture—a portrait is often thought of as capturing a physical likeness of an individual.
Join in a civic celebration with this tour featuring works by Chicago artists as well as works intrinsically linked to our city.
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.
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.
Hundreds of artworks entered the museum’s collection last year, each one broadening and deepening the stories we can share. Get to know some of our most notable new works below.
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.
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.
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.
Communicating new perspectives, questioning the status quo, speaking out about beliefs, and inspiring others to take action—art and activism often share some of the same underlying motivations.
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.