The Art Institute’s wide-ranging collection is a testament to thousands of years of human creativity and artistic ...

Admission is free for Illinois residents on Thursday evenings, 5:00–8:00, June 6–September 26. You can reserve your free tickets online in advance; your resident status will be verified using the zip ...

In the late 18th century, the French Academy promoted a severely Classical approach to history painting as a means to regenerate art—and in contrast to the perceived decadence of the Rococo style.

This depiction of an enslaved man constituted a timely abolitionist appeal in the years leading up to the British Emancipation Act of 1833. The subject raises his head and eyes toward the heavens, ...

In this altarpiece, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo conceived the traditional subject of the Virgin and Child with interceding saints as if the two figures have miraculously appeared on an altar in a ...

Ian Gordon is a student and a writer, and he works in development at the Art Institute of Chicago.

This classical subject tells the cautionary tale of the sculptor Perillus, who offered to make a bronze bull in which the tyrant Phalaris could roast his enemies. Perillus was rewarded by being the ...

Sir John Edward Poynter Untitled Drawing for Frame Cartouche (Plant Motif), 1899/1908 ...

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout Christ on the Road to Emmaus, n.d. Style of Jan van de Velde, I Window with Annunciation, n.d.

This painting depicts a young Saint John the Baptist living as a hermit in the wilderness. His cross of reeds, pointing gesture, and the nearby lamb refer to his role as a prophet foretelling the ...

Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) Thanksgiving Turkey, c. 1940 ...

Alice Rahon represented herself in this composition with a pallete in hand, standing atop a series of ascending switchbacks lined with abstracted depictions of animals, people, mountains, and trees.