The Art Institute of Chicago / Chicago
An empty bedroom can feel occupied. A seated figure can gather stillness. A printed wave can hold a moment open. Begin with the different ways an image makes you stay.
Browse 400 selected works →Have five minutes? / An Artologium looking sequence
Three works, three pauses. These questions invite close looking; they do not propose a historical connection between the objects.
The near chair faces into the room. Its empty seat gives the eye a place to pause before the floorboards draw it farther inside.
01 / Enter
Start with the empty chairs, then the pictures on the wall. How is a person suggested without being pictured?
Look closely & read the record →
02 / Attend
Notice the relation of the hands, knees and base. Then read the object record for the figure’s specific religious and cultural context.
Look closely & read the record →
03 / Return
Follow the arc of the wave back toward the boats. What keeps your eye moving inside a still image?
Look closely & read the record →Into the Afterlives lab
A work can lead to a question about transmission. The connection below tells you precisely how this museum enters each investigation.
Museum record used in research
Chicago’s Mondrian record is a source for this investigation of painting and dress. The linked essay identifies the particular painting and the limits of the comparison.
Visual essay · Sources and claim limits inside
What is here / 400 selected works
Our current selection includes paintings, prints and three-dimensional works. These three stops offer a looking exercise across distinct contexts, not a shared lineage. The museum’s location identifies the holding collection, not where every work was made.
Across collections / 01
One familiar design. Two museum objects. What changes when you stop treating an image as a single thing?
Two complete supplied images
Open either image for the original view and source. The display sizes are not physical scale; image differences alone cannot establish condition or printing order.
Across collections / 03
Two figures from Rodin’s Burghers of Calais monument—one a full-length plaster study in Chicago, one a heroic bronze head in Cleveland—show how two mediums record the same civic commission differently.
The Art Institute of Chicago1893.187
The Cleveland Museum of Art1920.120
Every selected image links to its museum record and CC0 dedication. The image’s source control includes its accession, original file and credit.