Frames Before And After
The actor Kirk Douglas, who played Van Gogh in Lust for Life, poses beside the self-portrait with its original frame in the 1950s.
The same self-portrait in a frame more fitting its time and aesthetic.
Though the self-portrait looked great in this frame, it had nothing to do with Van Goghs aesthetic. The frame didnt even fit well. If you take a look at the back, this frame had been enlarged, kind of crudely, to fit the self-portrait. We replaced the frame around 20 years ago with one thats actually a period frame in a molding style Van Gogh himself loved. Even better, the replacement frame still had its original finish and was a great color for the painting.
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This was painted over four-hundred years ago by one of Greeces most famous painters. It is the central panel of an altarpiece from El Grecos first major Spanish commission. The composition is divided into two the bottom is the earthly sphere of the apostles and the top is the realm of heaven where angels await Mary.
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A centerpiece of the museums new Medieval Arms and Armor collection. This may remind you of the classic knight in shining armor, but it actually represents the common soldier. The armor is from 16th century Germany, but the cloth was carefully recreated in 2017. Look closely enough and you will notice detailed touches like mud splattered up the legs.
The Art Institute Of Chicago Has Put 50000 High
The Art Institute of Chicago recently unveiled a new website design. As part of their first design upgrade in 6 years, they have placed more than 52,000 high-resolution images from their collection online, available to all comers without restriction.
Students, educators, and just regular art lovers might be interested to learn that weve released thousands of images in the public domain on the new website in an open-access format . Made available under the Creative Commons Zero license, these images can be downloaded for free on the artwork pages.
Weve also enhanced the image viewing capabilities on object pages, which means that you can see much greater detail on objects than before. Check out the paint strokes in Van Goghs The Bedroom, the charcoal details on Charles Whites Harvest Talk, or the synaesthetic richness of Georgia OKeeffes Blue and Green Music.
Ive included a few notable works from their collection above: The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat , Self-Portrait by Vincent van Gogh, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, Mao by Andy Warhol, and Two Sisters by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The resolution on the images is high enough to check out the brushstrokes on the paintings. Heres some detail on the van Gogh:
I love seeing more museums doing this.
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Barbara Kruger’s Strange Alluring Text
Toward this end and to her credit, Kruger has always insisted on generic-looking typefaces that match the no-nonsense tone of her messages. In many of the walls, the tight leading is relieved by the separation of lines of text into alternating bands of black on white or white on black. The text works have been described as site-specific, but it might be more accurate to describe some of them as site-adaptable. The athleticism and plasticity of Krugers type also means that copious amounts of vinyl will be used again when this exhibition is remade for MoMA PS1 in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art next year. Given the role plastic plays in our precarious environmental situation, I am happy to see Kruger present text works as digital projections, as in the three-channel video installation Untitled , 2020, which cuts streams of words with memes and maps. Unless the vinyl is recyclable, I would love to see her work continue in this direction.
Within the museum space, each work is thoughtfully installed along viewing paths that create organic connections and fulfill a spatial logic. The humorous collections of adjectives and nouns in Untitled and appear down the hall from each other: LOSERS, JERKS, HATERS, PLAYERS in one gallery and A MAJOR ARTIST, A MINOR FIGURE, A TIRED HACK. in the other. These two installations form reverberating bookends, bringing an element of comic timing to the viewers movement through the show.
Untitled
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African Art And Indian Art Of The Americas

The Art Institute’s African Art and Indian Art of the Americas collections are on display across two galleries in the south end of the Michigan Avenue building. The African collection includes more than 400 works that span the continent, highlighting ceramics, garments, masks, and jewelry.
The Amerindian collection includes Native North American art and Mesoamerican and Andean works. From pottery to textiles, the collection brings together a wide array of objects that seek to illustrate the thematic and aesthetic focuses of art spanning the Americas.
The Art Institute’s American Art collection contains some of the best-known works in the American canon, including Edward Hopper‘s Nighthawks, Grant Wood‘s American Gothic, and ‘s The Child’s Bath. The collection ranges from colonial silver to modern and contemporary paintings.
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The Art Institute Of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago has contributed approximately 1,450 images from their global permanent collection to the Artstor Digital Library. The selection in Artstor represents the diversity and excellence of the collection, featuring iconic highlights with an emphasis on antiquities from various cultures, European paintings, and works on paper.
The Art Institute of Chicago houses a collection of nearly 100,000 works spanning 5,000 years of artistic expression, including paintings, prints and drawings, sculptures, photographs, video, textiles, and architectural drawings and fragments.
In 1988, the increase of the contemporary art collection and the popularity of large exhibitions led to the construction of the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Building. During the 90s, Tadao Ando designed a gallery for Japanese screens for the Museum, and in 2009, a building by Renzo Piano devoted to modern and contemporary art was opened, including a bridge that connects the campus to Millennium Park.
The Art Institute Of Chicagochicago United States
The Art Institute of Chicago is a world-renowned art museum housing one of the largest permanent collections in the United States. An encyclopedic museum, the Art Institute collects, preserves, and displays works in every medium from all cultures and historical periods as well as hosts special exhibitions. With a collection of more than 260,000 artworks and artifacts, the museum has particularly strong holdings in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, early twentieth-century European painting and sculpture, contemporary art, Japanese prints, and photography. In 2009, the museum completed the largest expansion in its 130-year history, the internationally acclaimed Modern Wing designed by Renzo Piano. Incorporating the latest in green museum technology, the 264,000- square-foot Modern Wing is dedicated to modern and contemporary art, photography, architecture and design, and new museum education facilities. In addition to displaying its permanent collection, the Art Institute mounts approximately forty special exhibitions per year and features daily lectures, gallery tours, and special performances.
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Marc Chagalls America Windows
created this stained glass installation specially for the Art Institute of Chicago. The six panels commemorate Americas bicentennial and honor the country as a place of cultural and religious freedom, detailing the arts of music, painting, literature, theatre, and dance. This work highlights the city of Chicagos long and rich tradition of public art.
Hidden in the basement of the Art Institute of Chicago are 68 tiny rooms by Mrs. James Ward Thorne, also known as Narcissa Niblack Thorne. The detailed mini diorama rooms are based on European and American interiors and are constructed at a meticulous scale of one inch to a foot. Theyre also just super fun!
The Aztec Stone Of The Five Suns
This stone was carved to commemorate the reign of Emperor Motecuhzoma II. The hieroglyphic signs on the stone represent the five cosmic era, or suns, which legitimize the emperors rule. This piece is an amazing relic from the center of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztecs expansive empire, whose ruins now lie underneath downtown Mexico City.
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Entertainment And The Arts
The performs at , and is recognized as one of the best orchestras in the world. Also performing regularly at is the , a more diverse and multicultural counterpart to the CSO. In the summer, many outdoor concerts are given in and . , located 25 miles north of Chicago, is the summer home of the CSO, and is a favorite destination for many Chicagoans. The is home to the . The was founded by in 1956, and presents operas in .
Other live-music genre which are part of the city’s cultural heritage include , , , and . The city is the birthplace of and , and is the site of an influential . In the 1980s and 90s, the city was the global center for house and industrial music, two forms of music created in Chicago, as well as being popular for , , and . The city has been a center for culture, since the 1980s. A flourishing independent rock music culture brought forth Chicago . feature various acts, such as and the . A 2007 report on the Chicago music industry by the ranked Chicago third among metropolitan U.S. areas in “size of music industry” and fourth among all U.S. cities in “number of concerts and performances”.
Chicago contains a number of large, outdoor works by well-known artists. These include the , , and by , by , by , by , by , by , and the mosaic by .
Ryerson And Burnham Archives Finding Aids
The Ryerson and Burnham Archives collect regionally focused primary source materials on art, architecture, and design that complement and extend the permanent collections of the museums curatorial departments. Explore our archival holdings by subject or browse an alphabetical list of collections to locate the specific items that you would like to view. Processed collections in the archives are available for use during reading room hours by advance appointment. Learn more here.
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School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago
As aforementioned, the Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a museum and a school. The two still foster a close relationship, and the museum provides an incredible resource to students looking for inspiration. The school itself has grown into one of the most historically significant accredited independent schools of art and design in the nation. To visit the schools website and learn more, click here.
Monuments And Public Art

More representational and portrait statuary includes a number of works by ” rel=”nofollow”> Eternal Silence, and the completed by ), , , and , Brioschi’s , , , , , to , memorials along Solidarity Promenade to , and by , Strachovský, and , a by , and . A number of statues also honor recent local heroes such as , , and outside of the , next to the studios, and at the .
There are preliminary plans to erect a 1:1scale replica of ‘s statue of found in ‘s along Chicago’s lakefront in addition to a different sculpture commemorating the artist in for the 200th anniversary of ‘s birth.
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Visit The Art Institute Of Chicago
The renowned Art Institute of Chicago is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the country. The only museum in the world to be ranked among the worlds best by TripAdvisor four years in a row, the Art Institute is a must-see during any trip to Chicago.
Here are just a few things to know before you visit the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Ryerson And Burnham Archives Of The Art Institute Of Chicago Collect Artists’ And Architects’ Papers That Complement And Extend The Permanent Collections Of The Museum’s Curatorial Departments These Collections Contain A Wide Range Of Media Including Correspondence Published And Unpublished Writings Scrapbooks Architectural Drawings And Prints Business Papers Photographs Slides Audio Recordings Films Video And Ephemera
The Ryerson & Burnham Archives’ collections are notably strong in late 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, with particular depth in Midwest architecture. Architects such as Edward Bennett, Daniel Burnham, Bruce Goff, Bertrand Goldberg, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright are represented in a broad range of papers. Also, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago is documented through photographs by C.D. Arnold and through a collection of ephemera. The Century of Progress International Exposition of 1933-1934 in Chicago and the World’s Fair of 1939 in New York are also each represented in an individual archive. The Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection , a large collection of mounted photographic prints and lantern slides, provides valuable historic records of American architecture, landscape design, and urban planning. The Ryerson & Burnham Archives also collect the papers of artists and designers. Of particular note are the archives of such figures as Ivan Albright, Irving Penn, and Richard Ten Eyck.
Finally, the Institutional Archives document the institutions corporate history, including the papers of many important curators, teachers, and administrators.
The Art Institute of Chicago111 South Michigan Avenue,
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Libraries And Special Collections
Students and faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago have access to the rich collections of both the museum and the school, which support teaching and learning at SAIC. Our collections include traditional library and archival collections along with nontraditional, interdisciplinary, multimedia and site-specific resources.
The Art Institute Of Chicago Usa
The Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a museum and school for the fine arts in 1879 and is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States.
The origins for the Institute began in 1866, when a group of 35 artists founded the Chicago Academy of Design with the intent to run a free school with its own art gallery. The organization was modeled after European art academies, such as the Royal Academy. The Academy was a success, but the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 threw a spanner in the works. It destroyed the building and the Academy suffered from debt. This lead to the founding of a new organization, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1879, which bought the assets of the Chicago Academy of Design at auction.
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