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Arranged chronologically, and spanning the Middle Ages through 1950, this prodigious collection includes a significant array of Renaissance and Baroque art. However, its main draw is a body of nearly 400 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. Instrumental in its creation was Bertha Honoré Palmer who acquired over 40 Impressionist works (largely ignored in France at the time) for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

This impressive holding contains some 5,500 paintings and sculptures dating from the colonial period to 1950. In addition, paintings and works on paper are on loan from the Terra collection and there is a range of decorative arts, including furniture, glass, and ceramics from the 18th century through to the present. The silver collection is especially noteworthy.

Given the city’s strong architectural heritage and focus, it is not surprising that Chicago’s Art Institute boasts an architecture department, one of only a few in the US. Sketches and drawings are accessible to the public by appointment and changing public displays feature models, drawings, and architectural pieces, such as a stained-glass window by Frank Lloyd Wright.

This important and wide-ranging collection represents all the significant arts movements to emerge in Europe and America from 1950 to the present day. In addition to a strong body of Surrealist works, and notable paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Warhol, and Kandinsky, it affords an interesting opportunity to see how American artists, such as Georgia O’Keeffe, interpreted and reinvented European Modernism.

Dating back to 300 BC are over 16,000 textiles and 66,000 sample swatches originating from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Examples of clothing, needlework, tapestries, and lace are all featured. The items are extremely fragile, so exhibits are changed frequently.

This sizeable collection covers 5,000 years and features Chinese ceramics and jades, Japanese screens, and Southeast Asian sculpture. The museum’s assemblage of Japanese woodblock prints, such as Courtesan (c. 1710) by Kaigetsudo Anchi, is one of the finest outside Japan. Look out, too, for the rare early 14th-century scroll painting, Legends of the Yuzu Nembutsu.

A variety of artifacts, including sculptures, masks, ceramics, furniture, textiles, bead-, gold-, and metal-work, make up this relatively small, but interesting collection. Exhibits from both continents are arranged by region and culture: ceremonial and ritual objects are particularly intriguing.

The Harding Collection of Arms and Armor is one of the largest in America. On permanent display are over 200 items related to the art of war including weapons, and complete and partial suits of armor for men – as well as horses. The items displayed originate from Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, and date from the 15th through the 19th centuries.

This fabulous and unusual assemblage numbers in excess of 1,400 paperweights, making it one of the largest of its kind in the world. It showcases colorful and exquisite examples from all periods, designs, and techniques. The paperweights mostly originate from 19th-century France, though some were made in America and the United Kingdom. Displays also reveal the secrets of how paperweights are made.

Narcissa Ward Thorne, a Chicago art patron, combined her love of miniatures with her interest in interiors and decorative arts to create the 68 rooms in this unique Lilliputian installation. Some of the 1 inch:1 foot scale rooms are replicas of specific historic interiors, while others are period recreations, combining features copied from a variety of sites or based on illustrations and other records of period furniture.