The Art Institute of Chicago ~ A World-Class Collection at The 2nd Largest US Art Museum

Written by Gilbert Downing Monday, 21 February 2011 00:15

The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) was originally founded as the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in1879 to be both a museum and school. The name was changed in 1882, and shortly after, the institution was already in need of a new home for its expanding collection and growing student body. It moved to its present site at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street in 1893. The design of the classical Beaux-Arts building, by the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, allowed for the institution's ambitious goals. The Art Institute officially opened at its new home on December 8, 1893. Two significant improvements to the building followed soon after, the Fullerton Auditorium was added in 1898 and the Ryerson Library in 1901. In 1913 the museum startled the city by hosting the Armory Show, a sprawling exhibition of avant-garde European painting and sculpture. Exceptional purchases from that controversial exhibition launched the museum's collection of modern art. Expansion of the museum was again required to suitably display a collection that now included nearly every artistic medium and the solution was to build over the Illinois Central Railroad tracks that bordered the Art Institute's east wall. The growth of the professional staff led to the completion of the first major new structure in more than 20 years, the B. F. Ferguson Memorial Building was added in the 1950s. This addition is situated to the north of the original structure, which was renamed in honor long-time trustee Robert Allerton. The Morton Wing, erected in 1962, to the south of the Allerton Building, was designed to house the expanding modern art collection and restore symmetry to the complex. The dramatic increase of the contemporary art collection and the popularity of large traveling exhibitions led to the construction of the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Building in 1988. In the 1990s, the Art Institute constructed a new suite of galleries to house its Asian collection. Here, famed architect Tadao Ando designed his first American space, a gallery for Japanese screens. In 1993, a totally reconstructed Kraft Education Center opened to serve students, teachers, and families. In 2006, the Art Institute began construction of "The Modern Wing", an addition situated on the southwest corner of Columbus and Monroe. The project, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano, was completed and officially opened to the public on May 16, 2009. The 264,000-square-foot (24,500 m2) building makes the Art Institute the second largest art museum in the United States with over a million square feet total. The building houses the museum’s world-renowned collections of 20th and 21st century art, specifically modern European painting and sculpture, contemporary art, architecture and design, and photography... Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.artic.edu/aic/

The collection of the Art Institute of Chicago encompasses more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world and contains more than 260,000 works of art. Today, the museum is most famous for its collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and American paintings. Considered one of the finest in the world, the collection of European painting contains more than 3,500 works dating from the 12th through the mid-20th century. Holdings include a rare group of 15th-century Spanish, Italian and Northern European paintings, highlights of European sculpture, and an important selection of 17th- and 18th-century paintings. Major Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works and classic Modern works are among its most significant holdings. Included in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection are more than 30 paintings by Claude Monet including six of his Haystacks and a number of Water Lilies. Also in the collection are important works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir such as “Two Sisters (On the Terrace)” and Henri Matisse's “The Bathers”, Paul Cézanne's “The Basket of Apples”, and “Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair”. “At the Moulin Rouge” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is another highlight, as are Georges Seurat's “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” and Gustave Caillebotte's “Paris Street; Rainy Day”. Non-French paintings of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection include Vincent Van Gogh's “Bedroom in Arles” and “Self-portrait, 1887”.

The Department of American Art includes more than 1,500 paintings and sculptures from the 18th century to 1950 and nearly 2,500 decorative art objects from the 17th century to the present. Strengths in the collection include the Alfred Stieglitz Collection and significant groups of work by John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt and Winslow Homer. Modernist holdings include iconic images by Grant Wood, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper and the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Among the most important works are Grant Wood's “American Gothic”, Edward Hopper's “Nighthawks” and Mary Cassatt's “The Child's Bath”. The foundation’s collection of American works on paper are housed in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute. Institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago have assisted in creating a place for African American art to be explored freely without the restraints that once accompanied it. The pieces included in the Art Institute of Chicago's African American art collection provide a historical illustration of the progress made by African Americans as well as their continuing struggle. The American Decorative Arts galleries contain furniture pieces designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames. The Amerindian collection primarily focuses upon Mesoamerican and Andean ceramics, sculpture, textiles, and metalwork. Native North American Indian works, particularly from the Plains Indians, the Southwest, and California, are also on view.

The Art Institute's distinguished Asian collection comprises works spanning nearly five millennia from China, Korea, Japan, India, southwest Asia, and the Near and Middle East. It includes 35,000 objects of great archaeological and artistic significance, including Chinese bronzes, ceramics, and archaic jades; Chinese and Japanese textiles; Japanese screens and paintings; Indian and Persian miniature paintings; and Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture. The collection of Japanese woodblock prints is one of the finest in the world. The African collection includes over 400 works that highlight the diversity of artistic expression on the continent south of the Sahara, with emphasis on the sculptural traditions of West and Central Africa. Included are masks and figural sculpture, beadwork, furniture, regalia, and textiles from countries including Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa. The Art Institute’s collection of over 80 African ceramics is the largest in an American art museum. The Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman galleries hold the mummy and mummy case of Paankhenamun, as well as several gold and silver coins.

Almost 20 exhibitions are currently showing at the Art Institute. Amongst the ongoing exhibitions highlighting particular items from the permanent collection, the return of Marc Chagall’s America Windows should not be missed. The story began in the early 1970s, when Chagall came to the city for work related to his mosaic installed outside Chase Tower, “The Four Seasons”. In response to the city’s enthusiasm for his work and the Art Institute’s great support, the artist offered to create a set of stained-glass windows for the museum. Over the course of three years, plans were clarified, and in the end, Chagall determined that the windows would commemorate America’s 1976 bicentennial. The resulting six-panel work celebrates the country as a place of cultural and religious freedom, detailing the arts of music, painting, literature, theater, and dance. Because of his admiration for Chicago and its strong commitment to public art during the 1960s and 1970s, Chagall chose to dedicate the work to Mayor Richard J. Daley, a great supporter of public art projects. The windows were presented with much fanfare at a formal unveiling, hosted by the Auxiliary Board of the Art Institute, on May 15, 1977. Following an intensive period of conservation treatment and archival research, the windows returned in October 2010 as the stunning centerpiece of a new presentation at the east end of the museum’s Arthur Rubloff building. A wide variety of temporary exhibitions rotate through the Art Institute, among those currently showing are “Real and Imaginary: Three Latin American Artists” (until May 29, 2011), showing the works of three Latin American artists who share the beauty and richness of their cultural heritage in an exhibition of art from picture books. In a book of Latin American folktales, Raúl Colón layers washes of paint and etched lines, finishing with colored pencils. David Diaz’s brightly colored illustrations portray true stories of Mexican heroes and artists. And with a flair for humor, Yuyi Morales paints hauntingly beautiful, mystical pictures that resonate with the importance of family. “John Marin's Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism” on display until April 17th 2011 focuses on the watercolors of American modernist John Marin. His improvisational approach to color, paint handling, perspective, and movement situated him as a leading figure in modern art and helped influence the Abstract Expressionist movement. This exhibition, the first to present the Art Institute of Chicago’s phenomenal collection of the artist's work in its entirety,ranges from early images rooted in traditional practice to more personal and experimental compositions, showcasing how Marin, in the process of reinventing watercolor, transformed American painting.