Art Institute of Chicago
One of America's great art museums, home to Seurat, Hopper, and those lions.
The Art Institute of Chicago is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States, and by most measures one of the finest. Opened in 1893 in its current Beaux-Arts building on Michigan Avenue — right at the edge of Millennium Park — it holds a permanent collection of over 300,000 works spanning 5,000 years of human creativity. This is a world-class institution in every sense, not a regional curiosity: it owns some of the most recognizable paintings on the planet.
In practice, visiting means wandering through galleries that shift from ancient Egyptian artifacts to French Impressionism to American modernism without ever feeling like a forced march. The crown jewels are well-known for good reason: Georges Seurat's enormous pointillist masterpiece 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,' Grant Wood's 'American Gothic,' Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks,' and Georges-Pierre Seurat's work sit alongside a stunning collection of Impressionist paintings that rivals Paris. The Modern Wing, added in 2009 and designed by Renzo Piano, brings in floods of natural light and houses contemporary work that holds its own against the historic collection. Don't skip the Thorne Miniature Rooms — 68 tiny architectural interiors that are inexplicably captivating.
Thursday evenings the museum stays open until 8pm, which is the savviest time to visit — crowds thin out noticeably after 5pm. The two bronze lion sculptures flanking the Michigan Avenue entrance are a Chicago landmark in their own right, dressed in various costumes by the museum for local celebrations. Members of the Chicago Public Library can get free admission with their library card, and Illinois residents under 14 get in free every day.
