If you’re an art lover visiting Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago should be the first place on your bucket list. It’s home to more iconic works of art than we can count, and these five alone make it worth the visit.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Georges Seurat)
This neo-impressionist painting shows a group of Parisians enjoying an idyllic day at a park on the banks of the River Seine, and it went down in history as Georges Seurat’s magnum opus.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Hokusai)
It’s believed that around 100 copies of Hokusai’s woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa survived to this day, and the Art Institute of Chicago holds one of them.
Self-Portrait, 1887 (Van Gogh)
Van Gogh painted many self-portraits over the years, most of them housed in Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, but one of the most iconic ones can be found in Chicago.
Water Lilies (Claude Monet)
Claude Monet created around 250 oil paintings in his renewed series Water Lilies, now scattered all around the globe, and one of them can be found in the Art Institute of Chicago.
American Gothic (Grant Wood)
Grant Wood’s iconic painting is one of the most recognizable images of 20th-century American art and it’s only fitting for it to be housed in one of America’s leading art museums.