Art Institute of Chicago

You climb a wide flight of stone steps from the sidewalk. On either side, a bronze lion stands guard over the avenue. Behind you, the traffic of Michigan Avenue keeps moving. Ahead, tall doors open into cool and quiet halls. You are about to enter one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Take a moment on the steps before you go in. This is a place people return to for a lifetime.

The museum began in 1879. From the start it was two things at once. It was a school where artists trained, and a museum where the public could look. In its early years it had no fixed home. It moved between rented rooms while its collection slowly grew. Then came a chance to build something that would last.

That chance arrived with the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. The great fair drew millions of visitors to Chicago that year. A grand building rose here on Michigan Avenue to host meetings held alongside the fair. When the fair closed, the Art Institute moved into the building. It has stayed in this same spot ever since, growing outward in every direction.

The two lions at the entrance arrived in 1894. The sculptor Edward Kemeys made them from bronze. Look closely and you will see the pair are not the same. One lifts its head high and alert. The other lowers its head, as if about to move forward. People in Chicago treat them almost as old friends, and dress them in team colors when the city celebrates.

Inside, the collection reaches across thousands of years. There are ancient bronzes, rooms of armor, fine textiles, and furniture. But many visitors come first for the paintings. The museum holds one of the finest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art found anywhere outside of France. The walls carry names you may already know. There are also rooms of glass, photographs, and design. You could follow any single thread for hours.

One painting draws a steady crowd all day. It is A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, painted by Georges Seurat between 1884 and 1886. Stand back from it and you see people resting beside a river on a warm afternoon. Step closer and the whole scene breaks apart into tiny dots of pure color. Seurat placed each dot by hand. Your own eye does the mixing.

Not far away hangs American Gothic, painted by Grant Wood in 1930. A farmer holds a pitchfork. A woman stands at his side. A plain white house rises behind them. Their faces are serious and still. The image has been copied and joked about so many times that seeing the real painting, which is quite small, can feel like a true surprise.

In another room you will find Nighthawks, painted by Edward Hopper in 1942. Three customers sit inside a diner late at night. The street outside is dark and empty. The light inside is hard and faintly green. No one in the scene is speaking. The painting holds a stillness that many people carry with them long after they have walked away.

The museum has grown many times over the years. The newest large addition is called the Modern Wing. It opened in 2009. The architect Renzo Piano designed it with tall glass walls and a roof built to soften and filter the daylight. A slim footbridge reaches from the wing across to the green park next door. Inside, the rooms feel calm and full of daylight.

Walking here takes real time. The halls connect in long chains, one opening into the next. It is easy to lose your sense of direction among so many rooms. Many visitors simply choose one wing and let the rest wait for another day. The building is far too large to finish in a single visit, and trying only tires the eye.

Light is part of the experience everywhere you go. In some galleries it pours straight down from above. In others it is kept low and steady, set that way to protect old colors and fragile paper. Sound softens as you move further inward. Voices drop to near whispers. Footsteps slow on the stone and wooden floors. Benches sit in the middle of many rooms. People rest there and study a single wall for a long while.

A museum like this asks only one thing of you, which is that you look. You do not need to know every name or date. You can stand in front of a single painting and let it hold your attention completely. When you step back out between the two lions, the noise of the city returns at once. But something of the quiet inside tends to follow you home.