Art Institute Of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago  is an art museum located in Grant Park, at 111 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Overview
Overseen in 1999 by museum director James N. Wood, the Art Institute of Chicago is renowned for its extensive collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and American art. The building itself was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Boston architectural firm's Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. The museum notably holds more than 30 paintings made by Claude Monet, including six of his Haystacks, and a number of Water Lilies. Other significant works in the custody of the museum includes Two Sisters (On the Terrace) made by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Paul Cézanne's the Basket of Apples, and Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair. At The Moulin Rouge, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is also an important artwork held by the museum, as is Paris Street, Rainy Day, by Gustave Caillebotte. Others Non-French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artworks in the museum's collection includes Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles, and Self-portrait, 1887.

In addition, the museum also displays fine sculptures and architectural styles models from the past. The European Decorative Arts collection displays approximately 25,000 objects of furnitures, ceramics, metalworks, glass, enamel, and ivory from 1100. AD, to the present day. The department also includes the Arthur Rubloff Paperweight Collection (containing 1,544 objects), and the Thorne Miniature Rooms (an assortment of 68 miniaturized interiors at 1 : 12 scale showcasing American, European, and Asian architectural and furniture styles from the Middle Ages to the 1930s).

The museum also has a photography art-gallery in its basement (instituted in 1949, when Georgia O'Keeffe - a prominent American artist - gifted a significant portion of the Alfred Stieglitz collection to the museum). Over time, the museum has expanded its collection (boasting now some 20,000 works) covering that artform from its inception (in 1839) to the present day.

Armors and armaments from the Medieval period to the Renaissance are also displayed in the Museum, through the George F. Harding Collection of arms and armor, and three centuries of Old Masters works.

The African Art and Indian Art of the Americas collection of the museum is another highlight. The African collection includes more than 400 works that span the continent, highlighting ceramics, garments, masks, and jewelry. The Amerindian collection, on the other hand, features Native North American art and Mesoamerican and Andean works, from pottery to textiles.

Salvaged portions of the original trading room of the Chicago Stock Exchange (Designed by Louis Sullivan in 1894, and torn down in 1972) were reconstructed in the museum.

In-game, the left and right wings of the building are connected via a central wing (Gunsaulus Hall). A doorway in the central wing is actually a breakable panel, leading to a short tunnel. This way, one can quickly get from one side of the institute to the other.

History
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museumsin the United States. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 million people annually. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatorial departments, is encyclopedic, and includes iconic works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 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 & Burnham Libraries.

In 1916, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge added a new gallery - Gunsaulus Hall - in the form of a two-story bridge over the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, just behind the original building.

The museum was expanded again in 1977, with the addition of a new wing to the building, the Columbus Drive Addition, built by architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and which also houses one of the campuses of the School of the Art Institute. The Columbus Drive Addition also contains the Chicago Stock Exchange Building Trading Room, which was spared from demolition and moved into the new wing.

The growth of the collection has warranted several additions to the museum's 1893 building, which was constructed for the World's Columbian Exposition. 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 associated with 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.

In 2017 the Art Institute received 1,619,316 visitors, and was the 35th most-visited art museum in the world. However, in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum was closed for 169 days, and attendance plunged by 78 percent from 2019, to 365,660.

Trivia

 * In real life, Gunsaulus Hall spans a set of railway tracks, instead of the secret passage seen in game.