On our last day in Chicago, we spent the entire morning at the Art Institute of Chicago, which is the oldest and largest art museum in the United States. Several people had told us that it was a must-see when visiting Chicago, and they were right. The museum boasts over 300,000 permanent art collections, ranging from modern art and classical art to Chinese and Japanese expositions. We spent most of our time in the Impressionism area, where we observed paintings from Van Gogh to Seurat.

Before visiting the museum, we researched which paintings or artworks we wanted to see, knowing that the museum would be too big to cover in one day. We’re glad we chose the areas we wanted to see first, as we became restless after two hours of walking from one room to the next. We could have rested at their onsite café and bought food and drinks, but we didn’t want to waste our day at the museum. Therefore, we kept going until we saw everything on our list.

The app called Art Institute was incredibly helpful in guiding me through the museum and learning about each artwork. It maps out each floor of the museum and indicates which artwork has an audio guide. I managed to learn a lot more about the artworks through this app, and it was a great resource for understanding the techniques and history behind the work.

The coolest painting, in my opinion, was “A Sunday at La Grande Jatte” by George Seurat. I loved the technique of the painting with the tiny dots that make up the image. I found it to be pretty interesting.

Lastly, “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper is another favorite painting of mine because of its moody and eerie feeling. Interestingly, I read a recent article in the New York Times that used this same painting to depict the mood of our current state relating to COVID-19: a somber and unstable situation we are in.