The second-largest art museum in the United States has plenty of showstoppers. In parallel exhibitions, Edward Hopper's lonely Nighthawks and Grant Wood's American Gothic shine. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat stands alongside heaps of color-swirled Monets and Renoirs a few rooms away. It takes a time to go through the impressionist paintings — there are more here than anywhere else outside of France – but beyond that are sets of armor, dollhouse-like miniature rooms, and a modern wing with Warhols and Picassos.

The collection's expansion has necessitated many expansions to the museum's 1893 structure, which was built for the World's Columbian Exposition. The most recent extension, the Modern Wing built by Renzo Piano, opened in 2009 and extended the museum's space to about one million square feet, making it the United States' second-largest art museum behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Art Institute is affiliated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a prestigious art school, making it one of the country's few remaining united arts institutions.

Location: 111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603

Website: artic.edu

The Museum of Scientific and Industry (MSI) is a science museum in Jackson Park, Hyde Park, Chicago, Illinois, between Lake Michigan and The University of Chicago. It is housed in the World's Columbian Exposition's old Palace of Fine Arts since 1893. It was originally given by Julius Rosenwald, the president, and philanthropist of Sears, Roebuck & Company, and was backed by the Commercial Club of Chicago. It opened in 1933 during the Century of Progress Exposition.

A full-size replica coal mine, the German submarine U-505 seized during WWII, a 3,500-square-foot (330 m2) model railroad, the command module of Apollo 8, and the first diesel-powered streamlined stainless-steel passenger train are among the museum's displays (Pioneer Zephyr). In January 2021, Chevy Humphrey was named president and CEO of the private, non-profit museum.

Location: 5700 S Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60637

Website: msichicago.org

The Chicago-based DuSable Museum of African American History is committed to the study and preservation of African-American history, culture, and art. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, her husband Charles Burroughs, Gerard Lew, Eugene Feldman, Bernard Goss, Marian M. Hadley, and others created it in 1961. They founded the museum to showcase black culture, which was previously ignored by most museums and academic institutions. The Smithsonian Institution is affiliated with the museum.

The new wing houses a permanent display of Washington that includes mementos, personal items, and highlights from his political career. The museum also acts as the principal tribute to du Sable in the city. The desk of activist Ida B. Wells, the violin of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and the Charles Dawson Papers are among the highlights of the collection. The museum features 13,000 items, books, pictures, art pieces, and mementos in its collection. The majority of the DuSable collection came from private donors. It houses slave-era antiquities from the United States, nineteenth- and twentieth-century items, and archive papers, notably the journals of sea explorer Captain Harry Dean.

Location: 740 E 56th Pl, Chicago, IL 60637

Website: dusablemuseum.org

The National Museum of Mexican Art (Formerly known as the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum) is a museum dedicated to the study and appreciation of Mexican, Latino, and Chicano art and culture. Carlos Tortolero and Helen Valdez created the museum in 1982. The present Harrison Park facility, located in the Pilsen district of Chicago, Illinois, opened on March 27, 1987. The museum is the first Latino museum that has received accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums. The museum's purpose is to present Mexican culture as a whole, without borders (without borders). The museum bills itself as America's largest Latino cultural institution.

The museum features a permanent collection that includes notable works by Mexican painters as well as items from Mexican history. The permanent exhibit "Mexicanidad: Our Past is Present" examines Mexico's history in five stages: Pre-Cuauhtémoc Mexico, Colonial Mexico, Mexico from Independence to Revolution, Post-Mexican Revolution to the Present, and The Mexican Experience in the United States

Location: 1852 W 19th St, Chicago, IL 60608

Website: nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org

The Chicago Historical Society's museum is the Chicago History Museum (CHS). The Chicago Historical Society was created in 1856 to research and explain Chicago's history. Since the 1930s, the museum has been housed in Lincoln Park at 1601 North Clark Street, near the junction of North Avenue in the Old Town Triangle District. For its public appearance, the CHS chose the moniker Chicago History Museum in September 2006.v

The museum includes Chicago's most important collection of local history documents. Books and other published materials, manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, and photographs are all part of the enormous study library. It is available to the general public, as well as students working on academic assignments. The costume collection has about 50,000 items from the 18th century to the present. It includes several couture pieces, products manufactured by well-known Chicago manufacturers and designers, and clothing worn by noteworthy Chicago citizens.

Location: 1601 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60614

Website: chicagohistory.org

The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), often known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum located in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the world's largest. Because of the scale and quality of its educational and scientific activities, as well as its substantial scientific specimen and artifact collections, the museum is a popular natural-history museum. The permanent installations, which get up to two million visitors every year, feature fossils, contemporary cultures from throughout the world, and interactive programming showing today's critical conservation concerns. The museum is named after its first significant donor, department store mogul Marshall Field. The museum and its collections were inspired by the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the exhibits on show.

The museum maintains a temporary exhibition program that includes touring presentations as well as topical exhibitions created in-house. The professional team cares for nearly 24 million specimens and artefacts, which serve as the foundation for the museum's scientific-research initiatives. These collections contain the whole spectrum of extant biodiversity, diamonds, meteorites, fossils, and extensive anthropological and cultural artifact collections from throughout the world.

Location: 1400 S Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60605

Website: fieldmuseum.org

Navy Pier in Chicago, Illinois is home to the Chicago Children's Museum. The Junior League of Chicago was formed in 1982 in response to programming cuts in Chicago Public Schools. Initially situated in two corridors of the Chicago Public Library, it quickly expanded to provide trunk exhibitions and touring exhibits in response to capacity crowds on-site.

The museum relocated several times during its first few years of operation while it looked for a permanent location. When the Museum reopened as an anchor tenant at Navy Pier on Lake Michigan in 1995, it assumed it had found its home. The new building has an exhibition area of 57,000 square feet (5,300 m2) and three levels of educational exhibits, public activities, and special events. When it relocated to the Pier, it expanded to become the fourth biggest children's museum in the United States. Every year, the museum serves over 650,000 visitors, both at its Navy Pier facility and in neighborhoods around Chicago.

Location: 700 E Grand Ave, Chicago, IL 60611

Website: chicagochildrensmuseum.org

Columbia College Chicago established the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) in 1976 as the successor to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography. The museum has a permanent collection as well as the Midwest Photographers Project (MPP), which features portfolios of work by Midwestern photographers and artists. Since its inception in the early 1980s, the Museum of Contemporary Photography has amassed a collection of approximately 15,000 pieces by over 1,500 artists. The American Alliance of Museums has accredited the MoCP.

It's simple to go into this modest downtown museum, which is part of Columbia College Chicago, and see what's on display from the changing permanent collection. You may come across images by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, Sally Mann, Ai Weiwei, Robert Capa, or any of the other 1500 great contemporary photographers in the collection. Provocative exhibitions rotate every three months and tackle issues ranging from democracy to gun violence to global migration. It's free to watch and takes around a half-hour to complete.

Location: 600 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605

Website: mocp.org

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum in downtown Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, located near Water Tower Place. The museum, originally opened in 1967, is one of the world's largest venues for modern art. The museum's collection includes thousands of Post-World War II visual art pieces. The museum is administered in a gallery format, with individually produced shows on display throughout the year. Each exhibition may include temporary loans, items from the permanent collection, or a combination of the two.

The museum has hosted a number of important debut exhibits, including Frida Kahlo's first show in the United States and Jeff Koons' first solo museum exhibition. Later, Koons produced a show at the Museum of Modern Art that smashed the museum's attendance record. The most attended show to date is Takashi Murakami's work exhibition in 2017. The museum's collection, which includes works by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Alexander Calder, includes historical samples of late surrealism, pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art from the 1940s to the 1970s, as well as notable holdings of 1980s postmodernism and contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and related media. Dance, theater, music, and interdisciplinary arts are also included.

Location: 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611

Website: mcachicago.org

The Oriental Institute (OI), founded in 1919, is the University of Chicago's multidisciplinary research center and archaeological museum for ancient Near Eastern studies. Professor James Henry Breasted established it for the university using monies supplied by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. It conducts studies on ancient civilizations throughout the Near East, especially at its Luxor, Egypt, site, Chicago House. At its on-campus headquarters in Hyde Park, Chicago, the Institute displays a vast collection of artifacts connected to ancient civilizations. According to Field Museum anthropologist William Parkinson, the OI's highly focused "near Eastern, or southwest Asian, and Egyptian" collection is one of the best in the world.

The Oriental Institute Museum houses antiquities from excavations in Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. The famed Megiddo Ivories; other jewels from Persepolis, the former Persian capital; a collection of Luristan Bronzes; a massive 40-ton human-headed winged bull (or Lamassu) from Khorsabad, Sargon II's capital; and a monumental statue of King Tutankhamun are among the works in the collection. The museum is free to enter, however, visitors are invited to make a donation.

Location: 1155 E 58th St, Chicago, IL 60637

Website: oi.uchicago.edu