Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

One of the two lion statues (Kemeys, bronze 1893) flanking the Institute's main entrances
Established	1879; in present location since 1893
Location	111 South Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60603 USA
Collection size	300,000 works
Visitors	1.5 million annually (2013)
Director	James Rondeau
Public transit access	CTA Bus routes: (6 and 28 line) 'L' and Subway stations: Adams-Wabash:   Brown Line   Green Line   Orange Line   Pink Line   Purple Line Monroe:   Red Line   Blue Line Jackson-Dearborn:   Blue Line Metra Train: Van Buren Street Station
Website	www.artic.edu

The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879 and located in Chicago's Grant Park, 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 guests 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 — 1884, 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 cutting-edge curatorial and scientific research.

As a research institution, the Art Institute also has a conservation and conservation science department, five conservation laboratories, and one of the largest art history and architecture libraries in the country—the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.

The growth of the collection has warranted multiple expansions of the museum's original 1893 building, which was constructed for the World's Columbian Exposition of the same year. The most recent expansion, the Modern Wing designed by Renzo Piano, opened in 2009 and increased the museum's footprint to nearly one million square feet, making it the second-largest art museum in the United States, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Art Institute is connected to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a leading art school, making it one of the few remaining unified arts institutions in the United States.