art institute of chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago is a fine art museum located in Chicago, Illinois. The Museum (overseen by President James Cuno) and the School (overseen by President Tony Jones) are incorporated as equal partners.

The Museum

The Museum is known especially for its extensive collection of Impressionist and American art. It is located on the western edge of Grant Park, at 111 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, in a building designed by the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge (1892).

The building was originally constructed for the 1893 Worlds Fair as the World's Congress Auxiliary Building, with the intent that the Art Institute occupy the space after the fair closed.

The School

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is a professional college of the visual and related arts, accredited since 1936 by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, and since 1944 (charter member) by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. It is currently seeking accreditation from the National Architectural Accrediting Board. Its downtown Chicago campus consists of five buildings located in the immediate vicinity of the Museum. In order of acquisition they are:

• 280 South Columbus (Classrooms, Departmental Offices, Studios, Betty Rymer Gallery)
• 37 South Wabash (Classrooms, Main Administrative Offices, Flaxman Library)
• 112 South Michigan (Classrooms, Departmental Offices, Studios, Special Events Ballroom)
• 7 West Madison (Student Residences)
• 162 North State (Student Residences, Gene Siskel Film Center)

The School also owns these properties outside of the immediate vicinity of the Chicago Loop:

• 1926 North Halsted (Gallery Space) in Chicago. A property donated by artist Roger J. Brown.
• The Oxbow Property (Retreat Facility) in Oxbow, Michigan

The School leases:

• 36 South Wabash Leasing the 12th floor. (Administrative Offices, Architecture and Interior Architecture Design Center)
• 847 West Jackson Leasing the 2nd and 3rd floors. (Gallery Space)

History

Chicago Academy of Design

In 1866, a group of 35 artists founded the Chicago Academy of Design in a studio on Dearborn Street, 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, with Academians and Associate Academians. The Academy's charter was granted in March 1867.

Classes started in 1868, meeting every day at a cost of $10 per month. The Academy's success enabled it to build a new home for the school, a five story stone building on 66 West Adams Street, which opened on November 22, 1870.

However, the Great Chicago Fire the following year destroyed the building, along with a great deal of the rest of Chicago, and threw the Academy into debt.

Chicago Academy of Fine Arts

Attempts to continue in spite of the loss, using rented facilities, failed. By 1878, the Academy was $10,000 in debt. Members tried to rescue the ailing institution by making deals with local businessmen, before finally abandoning it in 1879 to found a new organization, named the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. When the Chicago Academy of Design went bankrupt the same year, the new Chicago Academy of Fine Arts bought its assets at auction.

Art Institute of Chicago

In 1882, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts changed its name to the current Art Institute of Chicago. The same year, they purchased a lot on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Avenue for $45,000. The property's building was leased, and a new building was constructed behind it, to house the school's facilities.

With the announcement of the World's Columbian Exposition to be held in 1892–93, the Art Institute pressed for a building on the lakefront to be constructed for the fair, but to be used by the Institute afterwards. The city agreed, and the building was completed in time for the second year of the fair. The construction costs were paid by selling the Michigan/Van Buren property. On October 31, 1893, the Institute was allowed to move into their new building.

In 2006, the Art Institute began construction of "The Modern Wing", an addition situated on the southwest corner of Columbus and Monroe. Completion of the project, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano, is scheduled for 2009.

Between 1959 and 1970, the Institute was a key site in the battle to gain art & documentary photography a place in galleries, under curator Hugh Edwards and his assistants.

Notable Alumni

• Enrique Alferez, Sculptor
• Thomas Hart Benton, painter
• Roger Brown (B.F.A. 1968, M.F.A. 1970), painter
• Natalie Bookchin
• John Chamberlain, sculptor
• John Churchill Chase, cartoonist
• Walt Disney (did not graduate), animator, founder of Disney
• Nora Dunn, actress
• Leon Golub, painter
• Edward Gorey, illustrator
• Art Green, painter, original member of The Hairy Who
• Halston, fashion designer
• Stieg Hedlund (attended 1984–1985) video game designer (Diablo, Diablo II, StarCraft)
• Hugh Hefner (took anatomy classes), founder of Playboy
• Herblock (studied there as a youth), political cartoonist, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner
• Don Herold, humorist (did not graduate)
• Jeff Koons, sculptor
• Raúl Martínez, Cuban painter and Pop artist
• Bill Mauldin, political cartoonist (did not graduate), two-time Pulitzer Prize winner
• Joan Mitchell, painter
• Elizabeth Murray, painter
• Georgia O'Keeffe (did not graduate, attended 1905–1906), painter
• Claes Oldenburg (attended from 1950–1954), sculptor
• Ed Paschke, painter
• Cynthia Rowley, fashion designer
• David Sedaris (B.F.A. 1987), author, humorist
• Victor Skrebneski, fashion photographer
• Mark Tobey, painter
• Anatole Upart, (B.F.A. 2000) printmaker, painter
• Sarah Vowell (M.A. 1996), author, humorist
• Orson Welles, filmmaker
• Grant Wood, painter, "American Gothic" (1930)
• Wen Yiduo, Chinese poet, scholar
• Fischerspooner, music group and performers
• Gahan Wilson, cartoonist
• Karl Wirsum, painter, original member of The Hairy Who
• Chris Ward, also known as mc chris, a nerdcore rapper

The Museum's Collection

Today, the museum is most famous for its collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and American paintings. 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. Important works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, such as Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Rowers' Lunch) and Two Sisters (On the Terrace), as well as Paul Cézanne's The Bathers, Basket of Apples, and Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair, are in the collection. At The Moulin Rouge, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is another highlight, as is Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Day. Non-French paintings completing the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection include Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles and Self-portrait, 1887. Among the most important works of the American collection are Grant Wood's American Gothic and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

However, the museum has much more than paintings. Fine sculptures from all over the world can be seen. In the basement are the Thorne Rooms. There are exact miniatures demonstrating American and European architectural and furniture styles. Also in the basement are galleries displaying its world-class photography collection. On the main floor is the George F. Harding collection of arms and armor reflecting armaments and armor throughout the Medieval period and Renaissance. A fine collection of Pre-Columbian Meso-American ceramic figures is another outstanding display. A special feature of the museum is a "touchable" statue for the blind, and for children. It is an expressive facial portrait of young St. Joan d'Arc.

The Art Institute's famous western entrance on Michigan Avenue is guarded by two bronze lion statues created by Edward L. Kemeys. When a Chicago sports team makes the playoffs, the lions are frequently dressed in that team's uniform. Just inside the eastern doors is a reconstruction of the trading room of the old Chicago Stock Exchange. Designed by Louis Sullivan in 1894, the Exchange was torn down in 1972. Salvaged portions of the original room were brought to the Art Institute and reconstructed. Leaving the Art Institute through the east doors at the end of the driveway is the Stock Exchange entrance.

The Museum has recently announced a $350,000,000 addition to the building. The structure, designed by Renzo Piano, will house the museum's modern works, which may compete with the city's other major art museum: Museum of Contemporary Art. The Art Institute hopes that the new addition will draw added attention to its 20th Century collections, which include such important paintings as Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, Henri Matisse's Bathers by a River, and René Magritte's Time Transfixed. The curators of the museum believe that its modern collection is the third best in the world, after that of the MoMA and the Centre Pompidou; the modern collection, they concede, has been overshadowed in the past by the Art Institute's extraordinary 19th century collection. The addition will also include a courtyard designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.

The Terra Collection

Since April 2005, approximately fifty paintings originally from the Terra Museum's (now the Terra Foundation) collection have been on loan to the Department of American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). The collections of the Terra and the Art Institute are located in a new suite of galleries, and together provide one of the nation’s most comprehensive presentations of American art. The foundation’s collection of American works on paper are housed in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute.

Parliament of Religion and Swami Vivekananda

The Chicago Art Institute also happens to be the venue where the famous Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda addressed the Parliament of the World's Religions in 1893. On September 11, 1995, the Art Institute put up a bronze plaque to commemorate Swami Vivekananda's historic address. The plaque reads:

On November 11, 1995, the stretch of Michigan Avenue that passes in front of the Art Institute was formally conferred the honorary name "Swami Vivekananda Way".