Art

Look closely at Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room: Reconstruction at the Art Institute of Chicago. A grand, double-height room with wood paneling, stenciled wall patterns, four hexagonal columns, and an interior balcony with guardrail at left.

Look closely at Shabti of Wahibreemakhet. Green-gray sculpture of a mummy with hieroglyphs etched from below the crossed arms to just above the feet.

Look closely at On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt. Painting of woman in a striped dress seated on the bank of a river, beneath a full, leafy tree, a boat at the shore and a village visible across the river.

Look closely at The Marriage of the Virgin. Engraving of a religious marriage featuring many figures, an older man placing a ring on a woman's finger and three cupids overhead.

Look closely at Ushabti (Funerary Figurine) of Horudja. A full-body figure of a human carved in what looks to be light-colored stone.

Childe Hassam painted Newport bathers, dunes, and a promenade in 1901. The scene shows how American Impressionism turned a summer resort into an experiment in light while recording a carefully limited view of modern life.

Look closely at The Nativity and the Adoration of the Shepherds. Engraving of a decaying classical structure. Wooden scaffolding is exposed, and the ceiling is gone.

Look closely at Fan. Black-and-white photograph of a fan made of finely carved pieces, featuring nude figures and cherubs among foliage.

A Netherlandish workshop imagined the Nativity amid choirs of angels and architecture modeled on newly excavated Roman decoration. The ruins connect Christ’s birth with the palace tradition of the biblical King David.

Look closely at Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnières). Painting in short strokes of pale blue, green, white, yellow, and pink, of a fisherman in one of two small boats on a river, a tree-lined bank and a bridge in the background.

Look closely at Articulated Dragon. Small iron sculpture of a dragon with a serpentine body, legs with talons, and long tail, all made of moveable joints.

Look closely at The Guardhouse. Vertical oil painting of a large pile of discarded armor, weapons, and other items in a guardhouse, including a rolled-up white, yellow, red, and blue flag and a drum.

Look closely at Panel. Vertical textile panel featuring a floral pattern with leaves in yellow, orange, pink, white, and green on a black background.

Look closely at Head of Executioner, from John Evelyn's Sculptura. Mezzotint of a light-skinned bearded man in left profile wearing a twisted band of fabric wrapped around his head.

Olowe of Ise carved this painted wooden post for the palace veranda of Ikere’s king. Its unequal figures describe Yoruba kingship through the people and spiritual forces that sustain it.

Look closely at The Road to Market. In a shaft of light, surrounded by dramatic shadow and numerous sheep, a woman on horseback in a white bonnet and red skirt carries a baby and a basket, a black dog at right.

This painted terracotta fragment carried the Gigantomachy—the battle between the Olympian gods and the Giants—into Etruscan architecture. Its broken surface preserves part of a larger visual argument about divine power, while leaving the original building and full arrangement unknown.

Jean-Léon Gérôme staged a chariot race in the Circus Maximus with tightly finished detail and a wide, crowded composition. Its first American owner was department-store magnate Alexander Turney Stewart, and the painting’s arrival in New York became news.

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes placed Alexander the Great before the desecrated tomb of Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire he conquered. The small figures turn a broad classical landscape into a meditation on power and impermanence.

Look closely at Blackware Jar with Single Spout. A squat oval-shaped ceramic jar, painted black, with a cylindrical top and two very small handles on either side of the top.

Look closely at The Wedding at Cana. Painting of a lively wedding reception with a man in red kneeling in front of a table.

Look closely at Plate from the Duke of Clarence Service. Porcelain plate with scalloped rim decorated with a border of royal blue and gold.

Jules Joseph Lefebvre placed a reclining nude in an invented, dimly lit interior whose fruit and luxury textiles signaled a generalized Middle East to European viewers. The Art Institute identifies the setting as part of a nineteenth-century academic tradition shaped by sexual and colonial fantasies.

Look closely at Beauty Under an Umbrella in the Snow. Narrow, vertical print of a Japanese woman in partial view, wearing a billowing pink-orange kimono and holding a yellow umbrella.