Ptolemy II used the portrait of the founder of the dynasty, Ptolemy I, on his coin. On the obverse, the aegis (a magical garment) worn by Ptolemy I alluded to Zeus as well as Athena; it was thought to ...

In a new installation for the Modern Wing, Margaret Honda works with sunlight, existing architecture, and the viewer’s presence to reconfigure standard elements of film projection. Extending the ...

Ellsworth Kelly explored the fundamentals of color, line, and form, yet the basis of his abstraction always lay in his observations of natural and built environments. Train Landscape, which Kelly made ...

The monumental stacks that Claude Monet depicted in his series Stacks of Wheat rose fifteen to twenty feet and stood just outside the artist’s farmhouse at Giverny. Through 1890 and 1891, he worked on ...

For over thirty years, Bill Viola has created single-channel videos as well as sound and video installations that focus on spirituality and explore multiple levels of human consciousness. In ...

Chicagoan Gertrude Abercrombie painted deeply personal works, using objects, motifs, and references knowable only to herself and her social and artistic circle. The Past and the Present depicts a ...

The Art Institute’s extensive Applied Arts of Europe collection of 8,500 objects includes furniture, ceramics, metalwork, glass, and wallpaper dating from 1100 to 1945. There is particular strength in ...

The Franke Reading Room is currently open for onsite, in-person research, but please note that access is available by advance appointment only; walk-in appointments are not possible. Find additional ...

In this interior scene of the artist’s summer residence in Maine, American Impressionist Frank Weston Benson depicted his daughter Elisabeth curled up in a rattan chair near a large fireplace. Benson ...