page_title: Art Institute of Chicago
section_title: American Art
hierarchical_section_title: Art Institute of Chicago / Collection / American Art
context_page_description: The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, 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 people 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, 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 several additions to the museum's 1893 building, which was constructed for the World's Columbian Exposition.
context_section_description: The Art Institute's American Art collection contains some of the best-known works in the American canon, including Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, Grant Wood's American Gothic, and Mary Cassatt's The Child's Bath. The collection ranges from colonial silver to modern and contemporary paintings.
  Nighthawks was originally purchased by the museum in 1942 for $3,000; its acquisition "launched" the painting into "immense popular recognition". Considered an "icon of American culture", Nighthawks is perhaps Hopper's most famous painting, as well as one of the most recognizable images in American art. American Gothic has been in the museum's collection since 1930 and was only loaned outside of North America for the first time in 2016. Wood's painting depicts what has been called "the most famous couple in the world", a dour, rural-American, father and daughter. It was entered into a contest at the Art Institute in 1930, and although not a favorite of some, it won a medal and was acquired by the museum.
caption: Mary Cassatt, The Child's Bath 1891–92
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