“Art Institute of Chicago to Celebrate Re-opening with Free Days”

The Art Institute of Chicago’s museum will re-open on Thursday, July 30, A.D. 2020 and celebrate with free days for Illinois residents during public hours from the 30^th of July to the 3^rd of August. It was closed for about four months due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The public needs to purchase tickets or reserve tickets on free days online in advance. Click here to start. Members do not need tickets.

ADMISSION PRICES

	General Admission	Chicago Residents	Illinois Residents (outside Chicago)	Fast Pass
Adults	$25	$20	$22	$35
Senior Citizens (65+)	$19	$14	$16	$29
Students	$19	$14	$16	$29
Teens (14-17)	$19	Free	$16	$29
Children	Free	Free	Free	Free

The A.I.C. offers free admission to all children under fourteen, Chicago residents under eighteen;[1] Link and Women, Infants and Children (W.I.C.) cardholders;[2] and Illinois educators (including Pre-K through 12^th Grade teachers, teaching artists currently working in schools, and homeschooling parents) every day.[3] Active-duty American Armed Forces personnel and their families receive free admission to the A.I.C. museum from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

HOURS

Days of the Week	Members Only	Public
Mondays	10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.	11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Tuesdays & Wednesdays	Closed	Closed
Thursdays & Fridays	12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.	1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Saturdays & Sundays	10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.	11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

The Art Institute of Chicago’s museum is closed on New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. It is open on every other holiday.

Visitors over the age of two must wear masks or other face coverings for the entirety of the visit. This includes while ascending or descending outdoor stairs and exploring the gardens. A party must practice social distancing of at least six feet with other parties. The A.I.C.’s museum is operating at 25% capacity to ensure social distancing is possible. Staff members have their temperatures taken and answer health screening questions when they show up for work in the morning. Visitors are not having their temperatures checked but should postpone their visits if they are unwell. The A.I.C. has installed plexiglass shields at admission counters and ticket-collecting stations. Hand sanitizer is available for staff members and visitors alike throughout the building. The checkroom is closed. Pack light and remember some items are not allowed in galleries.[4] Valet service is suspended. All restaurants are closed. The Member Lounge, the Ryan Learning Center, the Library Reading Room, all curatorial study rooms, and all auditoria are closed. Some galleries have limited capacity. A few galleries where social distancing is not possible are closed. Touchscreen interactives have been removed or disabled. Water fountains have been replaced with water bottle refilling stations. Visitors need to obey directional signs. Special exhibits may have virtual lines. Check at the entrances to those exhibits to reserve a place in line.

The Art Institute of Chicago combines in one organization an art museum and an art school. The COVID-19 pandemic-induced statewide lockdown has caused financial distress for museums and other cultural institutions as well as private enterprises. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago eliminated over seventy staff positions earlier this month. For context, the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum laid-off 120 full-time and part-time employees in mid-May;[5] in late May, the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) laid-off eighty-four full-time employees;[6] and, as Stefano Esposito recently noted in the Chicago Sun-Times, “Last month, the Field’s outgoing president, Richard W. Lariviere, announced in a letter to staff and supporters the elimination of 71 positions and the furloughing of a further 56 employees.”[7] The Field Museum of Natural History re-opened to Members on Friday, July 17, A.D. 2020 and will re-open to the public on Friday, July 24, A.D. 2020. The M.S.I. will re-open to Members on Wednesday, July 29, A.D. 2020 and to the public on Saturday, August 1, A.D. 2020. The Adler Planetarium has not yet announced when it will re-open.

Figure 1 Credit: Adobe Stock Photo Caption: This photo, taken on August 14, 2011, depicts the famous guardian lions outside the main entrance of The Art Institute of Chicago on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago.

According to the historian Bessie Louise Pierce (1888-1974), in 1877 a number of prominent businessmen were invited to join a group of artists on the board of trustees of the Chicago Academy of Design – ignoring the fact there were already businessmen on the board of trustees who had lost everything in the Great Fire of 1871 – in an attempt to revive the project, but they soon resigned and founded the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1879. The businessmen she identified were William B. Doggett, Marshall Field I’s mentor Potter Palmer (1826-1902), Franklin McVeigh, Nathanial K. Fairbank, Marshall Field I’s business partner Levi Z. Leiter (1834-1904), First National Bank President Samuel M. Nickerson, Blue Island Land & Building Company Treasurer George C. Walker, clothier Henry W. King, lawyer Mark Skinner, and contractor William B. Howard.[8] Its leaders benefited from being able to purchase the assets of the Chicago Academy of Design, which had barely survived the Great Fire of 1871. Banker Charles Lawrence Hutchinson (1854-1924) succeeded Levi Z. Leiter as president, and he held the office for forty-two years from 1882 until his death in 1924.[9] In 1882, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts changed its name to The Art Institute of Chicago. That same year, The Art Institute of Chicago moved from rented space at the intersection of State & Monroe to property owned by the Art Institute at the southwest corner of Michigan & Van Buren, and the Art Institute purchased adjacent land in 1885.[10] In 1885-86, John W. Root (1850-1891) of Burnham & Root designed a Romanesque[11] building to house the Art Institute, at 404 South Michigan Avenue, which opened on November 19, 1887.[12] The A.I.C. organization soon outgrew the Romanesque building designed by J. W. Root and a new home had to be found. [13] For Hutchinson, who served a one-year-long term as president of The Commercial Club of Chicago in 1889, promoting the city by bringing the World’s Fair to Chicago and securing a new home for the Art Institute could be combined. If a permanent building were to be erected to temporarily house fine arts exhibitions lent to the World’s Columbian Exposition Company from governments all over the world, then when the World’s Fair ended, the Art Institute could occupy the building. According to historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, the proposal to construct a building that would temporarily serve the World’s Columbian Exposition and permanently house the Art Institute was discussed by The Commercial Club of Chicago in 1890.[14]

In 1892, the A.I.C. sold Root’s Romanesque building to the Chicago Club.[15] Mail-order retail kingpin Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844-1913), who had won a lawsuit to force the City of Chicago to clean up Lake Park (later re-named Grant Park) did not object to the A.I.C. building being erected in Lake Park, though he later regretted it because it established a precedent that it was acceptable to build structures in Lake Park and he would go on to spend a fortune on lawsuits to prevent other museums and monuments from subsequently being built there.[16] The only property owner on Michigan Avenue to refuse to sign a consent decree allowing for the A.I.C. building to be erected with a 400-foot-long frontage on Michigan Avenue was Mrs. Sarah Daggett, who was accused of being part of “a New York clique aiming at crippling” Chicago’s effort to host the World’s Fair.[17] Ultimately, her husband signed her name, and city officials and courts decided he had a right to do so.[18] Charles A. Coolidge with the Boston architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge designed the Italian Renaissance-style structure at the west end of Lake Park along Michigan Avenue, where Adams Street terminates in a T-intersection at Michigan Avenue. While the A.I.C. project was underway, Coolidge was also awarded the contract to design the Chicago Public Library, the city’s first purpose-built public library building, which opened in 1897, and in 1977 became the Chicago Cultural Center.[19] The A.I.C. building was erected on the former site of the Inter-State Industrial Exposition Building.[20] [Coolidge also designed the Georgian Revival style mansion for Chicago Tribune publisher and post-Great Fire Mayor of Chicago (1871-73) Joseph Medill (1823-1899), built in 1896, which was later enlarged in the 1930s by Medill’s grandson and Chicago Tribune publisher Colonel Robert R. McCormick (1880-1955) and is now the McCormick Museum at Cantigny Museum and Gardens in Winfield, IL.] In 1897, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Ward’s lawsuit against the City of Chicago to clean and improve Lake (now Grant) Park, and prevent the City from building a civic center there, but exempted the A.I.C. in Lake Park and the library in Dearborn Park, where Lincoln once spoke.[21] Before the A.I.C. took possession of the building, it was used as a lecture hall during the World’s Columbian Exposition, the World’s Congress Auxiliary.

The “Congresses” (international conferences and symposiums) were the brainchild of Chicago lawyer, judge, teacher, author, and orator Charles Carroll Bonney (1831-1903), and covered such topics as women, labor, medicine, education, finance, temperance, evolution, religion, philosophy, literature, architecture, and art.[22]

The Art Institute opened in its new home on Friday, December 8, 1893. The gala opening of the new A.I.C. building was on Sunday, December 31, 1893.

There are a pair of enormous bronze lions flanking the stairs at the main entrance of The Art Institute of Chicago, on that building’s west side, facing the intersection of Michigan and Adams, which also date back to the World’s Columbian Exposition. They are roughly the size of Aslan from the C.S. Lewis children’s fantasy novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The lions were the work of Captain Edward Kemeys (1843-1907), a self-taught artist who served as an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Back in the 1970s, the Landmarks Preservation Council and Service stated flatly the bronze lions were by Kemeys.[23] More recently, Timothy Whitman attributed the lions to Kemeys, and explicated at the end of the World’s Columbian Exposition “the plaster lions were removed [from the Palace of Fine Arts], recast in bronze with funding from Mrs. Henry Field,[24] and donated to The Art Institute of Chicago.”[25] [According to the more common edition of The Dream City, the sculptors of these lions at the South Portico of the Palace of Fine Arts were Theodore Bauer and A. P. Proctor, but this is a mistake, as those sculptors made other lions for other stairs of the Palace of Fine Arts.[26]] The Palace of Fine Arts down in Jackson Park served as an art museum during the World’s Columbian Exposition. [It is the last palace from the White City that remains standing in Jackson Park.] Subsequently, it housed The Field Museum, until 1920, when it moved into its new building in Burnham Park. Since 1933, the Palace of Fine Arts has housed the Museum of Science and Industry, which opened during Chicago’s second World’s Fair, A Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-34). The A.I.C.’s bronze lions were unveiled on May 10, 1894.

In 1894, Martin A. Ryerson donated fifteen paintings to the Art Institute. He followed this with a bequest of 227 paintings in 1933.[27] His widow, who died in 1938, made further bequests donating yet more artworks to the Art Institute and other art museums. A lawyer and lumberman, Ryerson was also a partner in A.S. Gage & Company, manufacturer of hats and gloves.[28] He provided funds for the Art Institute’s Ryerson Library (1901).

In 1900, the A.I.C. benefitted from a bequest of $25,000 of Timothy Blackstone.[29] More significantly, Samuel M. Nickerson, founder of First National Bank of Chicago, and his wife donated an art collection valued at $300,000 that included paintings, engravings, Chinese and Japanese porcelains, jade artworks, and bronze artworks.[30]

Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge also designed the first addition of 1901, the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.[31] The A.I.C. had exhibitions on Burnham and Bennett’s Plan of Chicago in 1909 and 1979.[32] The A.I.C. benefitted from multiple bequests of Potter Palmer’s widow, Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918). These form the Potter Palmer Collection. Today, the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries contain the “Bertha Honoré Palmer Correspondence Collection, 1883-1899,” which includes correspondence that concerned the World’s Columbian Exposition and her acquisition of European paintings.

Several privately financed additions were made to The Art Institute of Chicago in the 1920s. The Hutchinson Wing, named after Charles L. Hutchinson, was built in 1920 to house the Oriental collection. That same year, a garden court was added by virtue of a gift from power company president George A. McKinlock and his wife, in honor of their son who died at Soisons in World War I. Coolidge & Hodgdon designed the McKinlock Court.[33] The court’s sea creature-themed fountain, built in 1931, was designed by Carl Milles, as a replica of a fountain in Lidingo, Sweden.[34] In 1925, a 785-seat auditorium, the Goodman Memorial Theater, was added through the generosity of lumberman William O. Goodman and his wife to honor their son, Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, a poet and playwright also killed in World War I. Howard Van Doren Shaw designed the Goodman Theater. [35] The Mather addition, a lower-floor service area, was built in 1926 with funds provided by Alonzo C. Mather, manufacturer of railroad cars that allowed for the feeding and watering of animals without unloading them. Robert Allerton, a grain farmer and bank director, paid for the Agnes Allerton Wing, built in 1927-28 to house textiles, furniture, and tapestries, in order to honor his late mother, wife of Samuel Allereton (1828-1914), a large-scale farmer who had had founded or helped found the First National Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Union Stockyards, and the village of Allerton, Illinois.[36]

The South Garden is a sunken garden, designed by Dan Kiley (1912-2004) and constructed in 1965, accessed from Michigan Avenue that is home to Taft’s Fountain of the Great Lakes (1913), which was reinstalled so as to be set against the Morton Wing.[37] In front of the sculpture is a reflecting pool with a few low jets.[38] Kiley was an apprentice of Warren H. Manning, just as Manning was an apprentice of Frederick Law Olmstead.[39]

Narcissa Niblack Thorne (1882-1966), wife of A. Montgomery Ward’s nephew James Ward Thorne (1874-1947), built the Thorne Miniature Rooms and donated them to the A.I.C. She had commissioned their construction and craftsmen built them to her specifications. Mrs. Thorne had the one-twelfth scale model period rooms that recreated everything from a Gothic-style Roman Catholic church in England to a dining room in New Mexico in 1940. She made them for educational purposes, exhibited them at A Century of Progress; World’s Fairs in San Francisco and New York City in 1939-40; and the Chicago Historical Society, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and other museums; in addition to the A.I.C.

James N. Wood (1941-2010) was head of the A.I.C. from 1980 to 2004.[40] Previously, he had been Director of the St. Louis Art Museum; Associate Director of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; and had held several positions at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.[41] Under Wood’s leadership, the George F. Harding Collection of Arms & Armor was acquired; the Daniel F. & Ada L. Rice Building (1988) and Regenstein Hall were designed and built; galleries for Chinese, Korean, and Japanese art were built; the Ryerson and Burnham libraries, the main entrance, the lobby, and the Department of Prints & Drawings underwent restoration; the garden was remade; and he was instrumental in the later construction of the $198,000,000 Modern Art wing designed by Renzo Piano.[42] Two exhibitions during his tenure set global records for attendance: Claude Monet: 1840-1926 (1995) and Van Gough and Gauguin: The Studio of the South (2001). [43] The Harding Collection of Arms & Armor, acquired in 1982, consists of more than 2,000 artifacts. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of its kind. The Office of John Vinci oversaw the 1987 restoration of the lobby.[44] The North Garden (1991), was designed by Hanna/Olin.[45] According to the AIA Guide to Chicago, Thomas Beeby of Hammond, Beeby & Babka (now HBRA) designed the popular neoclassical Daniel F. & Ada L. Rice Building (1988).[46] However, according to HBRA, Dennis E. Rupter, who joined the firm in 1979 and became a principal of it in 1983, was the firm’s Principal-in-Charge for the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Building, as he was for the design of the Harold Washington Library Center.[47] An exhibition (temporary exhibit) space, Regenstein Hall, was also built.[48] Tadao Ando’s Japanese screen gallery is a popular 1992 addition. Two architectural firms, Weese Langley Weese and Gilmore, Franzen designed the 2001 restoration of Fullerton Hall.[49] In 2001, the A.I.C. revealed Renzo Piano would design a new wing at the northeast corner of the A.I.C.’s property, which was expected to be completed in 2007. [50] On Saturday, May 16, 2009, the Modern Wing, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning[51] architect Renzo Piano, opened. Piano had previously designed The New York Times Building and the renovation of the Morgan Museum & Library in New York City.[52] With this 264,000-square-foot addition, the Art Institute became the second largest art museum in the United States. The Modern Wing is discretely placed behind the original building on Michigan Avenue, on the south side of Illinois Central Railroad tracks on which Metra interurban trains run. It is connected to the original building by way of a 1916 addition that bridges the train tracks. In this facility, the A.I.C. would be able to display 20^th and 21^st Century art, including modern European paintings and sculptures, contemporary art, architecture and design, and photography.

The Art Institute of Chicago’s museum sits at the west end of the Chicago Park District’s Grant Park. It has two entrances. The Michigan Avenue Entrance is 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60603. The Modern Wing Entrance is 159 East Monroe Street, Chicago, Illinois 60603. Click here to download the Visitor Guide. The Website is https://www.artic.edu/. The phone number is (312) 443-3600.

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ENDNOTES

[1] The A.I.C. is free for Chicago teens (fourteen-to-seventeen) thanks to Glenn and Claire Swogger and the Redbud Foundation.

[2] Link and W.I.C. cardholders must present the Link or W.I.C. and a photo identification card at an admission counter to receive free admission for themselves and their families.

[3] Educators need to apply online for a voucher. Click here to find out how to apply. A voucher is valid for three months. Either print it out and present it at admission counter or bring it up on a smartphone screen to be scanned. An educator must present valid identification.

[4] The following items are not allowed in the galleries: bags, camera bags, and purses larger than 13” x 17” x 4”; backpacks and backpack baby carriers; art materials other than pencils (including pens); shopping bags; flowers and balloons; food and drinks (other than water bottles); toys; tripods; flash attachments; video cameras, and selfie sticks; umbrellas that are too big to be stores in bags; and wrapped gift packages.

[5] Stefano Esposito, “Adler Planetarium lays off 120 employees,” Chicago Sun-Times, 14 May, 2020 (https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/5/14/21258846/adler-planetarium-lays-off-120-employees) Accessed 07/22/20

[6] Stefano Esposito, “Museum of Science and Industry cuts 84 jobs,” Chicago Sun-Times, 27 May, 2020 (https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment-and-culture/2020/5/27/21271759/chicago-museum-of-science-and-industry-layoffs) Accessed 07/22/20

[7] Stefano Esposito, “Field Museum reopens July 17,” Chicago Sun-Times, 9 July, 2020 (https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/7/9/21318871/coronavirus-pandemic-shutdown-field-museum-re-opening-july-17) Accessed 07/22/20

[8] Bessie Louise Pierce, A History of Chicago, Volume III: The Rise of a Modern City 1871-1893. Alfred A. Knopf, 1957, 1975. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press (1957, 2007), pages 494 & 495

[9] Jane H. Clarke, “The Art Institute’s Guardian Lions,” Museum Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1988, p. 49

[10] Pierce, A History of Chicago, Vol. III , p. 495

[11] Examples of Romanesque architecture include the Cathedral of Trier in Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany; the Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert of Durham in Durham, England; and the Cathedral of Saint-Front in Perigueux, France. In The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Trilogy (2001-2003), the capital of Gondor, Minas Tirith (also known as the White City) is depicted in Romanesque style.

[12] Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press (2006), p. 49

See also Donald F. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (1996), pages 385-387