Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago stands on South Michigan Avenue in Grant Park, in downtown Chicago. It is a private nonprofit museum and also runs the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the leading art schools in the United States.

The institute was founded in 1879. Its main Beaux-Arts building, guarded by two bronze lions at the entrance, was built for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and has housed the museum since then. The Modern Wing, designed by Renzo Piano, opened in 2009 and added a large space for twentieth and twenty-first century art.

The collection is especially strong in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, including works by Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. American highlights include Grant Wood's American Gothic and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. The Thorne Miniature Rooms, the Chagall America Windows and large collections of Asian art, arms and armour, photography and design are also on show.

General admission starts at about $32 for adults and $26 for seniors over 65 and students (check artic.edu for current admission), with free entry for children under 14 and Chicago residents under 18, and free days for Illinois residents at set times. Tickets can be bought online. The museum is a short walk from the Adams/Wabash station on the L.

Nearly 300,000 works in 11 departments

The Art Institute holds nearly 300,000 works across 11 curatorial departments. With a footprint of almost one million square feet, it is the second-largest art museum in the United States, and it welcomed 1,322,195 visitors in 2023. Few visitors see more than a fraction of it, so a plan helps.

Caillebotte, Picasso and other crowd favourites

Beyond Nighthawks and American Gothic, the museum has several works that draw their own crowds. Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day, painted in 1876 and 1877, is the large canvas of umbrellas on a wet boulevard. Picasso's The Old Guitarist of 1903 hangs in the modern galleries on the third floor of the Modern Wing. The Monet holdings run to more than 30 paintings, including Wheatstacks (End of Summer) from his 1890 to 1891 series.

Renzo Piano's wing and the Nichols Bridgeway to Millennium Park

Renzo Piano's Modern Wing opened on 16 May 2009 and added 264,000 square feet. The Nichols Bridgeway, a narrow pedestrian bridge, runs from its rooftop sculpture terrace across Monroe Street into Millennium Park, so you can link the museum with Cloud Gate and the Lurie Garden on foot. On the ground floor, the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries form one of the largest art history and architecture libraries in the country.