Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago · United States · Founded 1879
One of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States, located in Chicago's Grant Park and famed for its Impressionist and American collections.
1.5 million
Annual Visitors
300,000 works
Collection
2–4 hours
Recommended Visit
Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge (1893) · Renzo Piano (Modern Wing, 2009)
Architect
About Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 million people annually.
Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatorial departments, is encyclopedic, and includes iconic works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and Grant Wood's American Gothic.
Its permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art is augmented by more than 30 special exhibitions mounted yearly that illuminate aspects of the collection and present curatorial and scientific research.
The museum's main building, designed by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge in the Beaux-Arts style for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, is guarded by two famous bronze lions sculpted by Edward Kemeys.
Masterworks & Must-See Highlights
The works that define Art Institute of Chicago — and why they matter.
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Georges Seurat · 1884–1886
Gallery 240, Modern Wing
Seurat's pointillist masterpiece depicting Parisians at leisure on an island in the Seine, painted with millions of tiny dots of pure colour. At 2 × 3 metres it dominates the gallery — and has dominated 20th-century popular culture through Broadway musicals and countless reproductions.
Nighthawks
Edward Hopper · 1942
Gallery 246
Four figures in a fluorescent-lit all-night diner on an empty street. The most iconic image of American urban loneliness and alienation — painted in the weeks after Pearl Harbour as a vision of wartime isolation.
American Gothic
Grant Wood · 1930
Gallery 263
A farmer and his daughter (often mistaken for wife) posed before an Iowa farmhouse with Gothic-arched window. The most parodied painting in American art history; Wood's intention — satire or celebration of rural life — is still debated.
The Bedroom (Van Gogh)
Vincent van Gogh · 1889
Gallery 241
The Art Institute holds the third of Van Gogh's three versions of his Arles bedroom — slightly smaller and with more muted colours than the others in Amsterdam and Paris.
Collections & Highlights
Frequently Asked Questions
A small ask before you go
You've just explored one of humanity's greatest collections of beauty. Art has the power to move us, inspire us, and change how we see the world. But millions of people will never see beauty like this — not because the art isn't there, but because they can't see at all.
Preventable blindness, caused by conditions like cataracts and trachoma, affects people of all ages across the world's poorest communities. A small gift — for the cost of a museum ticket — can provide a simple surgery to restore someone's sight and transform their life.