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Art Institute of Chicago

111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL

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The Art Institute of Chicago traces back to 1866, when a group of 35 artists founded the Chicago Academy of Design with ambitions to run both an art school and a gallery. The Great Chicago Fire destroyed their building in 1871, and the organization struggled financially for years afterward before members regrouped and established the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1879. That reorganized institution adopted its current name in 1882 under the leadership of banker Charles L. Hutchinson, who guided the acquisition of property on Michigan Avenue and oversaw significant expansion through the 1880s. The museum moved into its present home on October 31, 1893, occupying a Beaux-Arts building originally constructed for the World's Columbian Exposition — meaning the museum's building predates most of its own founding-era permanent collection. The official opening reception, held December 8, 1893, featured performances by conductor Theodore Thomas and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a genuinely grand civic occasion for what had started, less than three decades earlier, as a struggling art school rebuilding from a fire. For a Chicago attractions list, the Art Institute is the essential "world-class collection, in a building built for a World's Fair" entry — an art academy that survived the Great Chicago Fire and grew into one of the most significant art museums in the country.

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