Edward Hopper (1882–1967), creator of art that novelist John Updike described as "calm, silent, stoic, luminous, and classic," is one of the most enduring and popular American painters of the 20th century. A pivotal artist who was intensely private, Hopper made solitude and introspection important themes in his paintings, which have been celebrated as a part of the very grain and texture of the American experience.

Inventive. Collaborative. Research-driven. Led by principal and founder Jeanne Gang, Chicago-based Studio Gang Architects has established itself as one of the premier architectural firms working today. Inside Studio Gang Architects presents an engaging workshop-like environment that showcases and reveals the practice's creative process as they seek architectural solutions to pressing contemporary issues. During the course of this exhibition, two Archi-Salons will engage a host of architects, journalists, and critics in discourse surrounding the contemporary practice of architecture. Held within the gallery space, the two salons will focus on different perspectives that influence current practices. These conversations will be inspired by Studio Gang’s work, but ultimately will address larger issues in the field of contemporary architecture.

This landmark exhibition is devoted to the marine paintings of Edouard Manet (1832–1883), a little-studied but highly significant aspect of the career of the artist who is sometimes referred to as the father of Impressionism. Taking Manet’s seascapes—ranging from 1864 to shortly before his death in 1883—as a point of departure, the exhibition traces the complex interactions that link the artist to his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, including Gustave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and James McNeill Whistler, among others. Manet and the Sea brings together innovative works on sea-related themes by a variety of artists with differing ambitions. At the same time, it addresses emergent sociohistorical phenomena, especially the increase of tourism, which made the sea newly attractive to artists in the second half of the 19th century.

Chicago Architecture: Ten Visions presents diverse views of the future of Chicago’s built environment from 10 internationally renowned architects. The architects were selected from an invited competition juried by architects Stanley Tigerman and Harry Cobb, in collaboration with curators from the Art Institute’s Department of Architecture. The 10 architects reflect a cross section of Chicago’s vibrant architectural scene—from large and small firms as well as the academic community—bringing to this exhibition diverse experiences and insights. Each architect was asked to define an important issue for the future of Chicago and create a “spatial commentary” on that particular theme. Within a lively plan designed by Stanley Tigerman, each of the participants has curated and designed his or her own mini-exhibition in a space of approximately 21 feet square. Tigerman’s setting creates a linear sequence in which visitors pass through the architects’ spaces to an interactive area where the architects’ commentaries can be heard by picking up a telephone. Visitors are encouraged to record their comments on any and all of the “ten visions.”

Japanese folding screens have captivated the imagination of the West since the 16th century, when Europeans had their first glimpse. Across their expansive decorative surfaces, the realities and imaginations of artists over hundreds of years have been charted with bright mineral pigments and precious gold and silver. More so than smaller painting formats, the screen is the canvas upon which artists have historically realized their most expansive visions, which is why they are so often career-defining masterpieces. Beyond Golden Clouds celebrates the full range of the screen format, made possible by the collaboration of the Art Institute and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Unique among past shows, this exhibition displays works dating from as early as the 16th century to contemporary screens of the past decade, and features various media, including traditional paper and silk as well as stoneware and varnish. The exhibition, which will be shown at both museums, includes a total of 32 works of art. During the week of August 10–14, several works in the exhibition will be rotated out and replaced by others, offering the chance to experience the exhibition anew.

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Winslow Homer, who created some of the most breathtaking and influential images in the history of watercolor, was, famously, a man who received almost no formal artistic education. Acknowledged in his own day as America’s most original and independent watercolorist, he had an intuitive relationship with this challenging yet flexible medium. Between 1873 and 1905, he created nearly 700 watercolors. A staple of his livelihood, watercolors were also his classroom, a way for him to learn through experimentation—with color theory, composition, materials, optics, style, subject matter, and technique—far more freely than he could in the more public and tradition-bound arena of oil painting. This exhibition provides an intimate look at how one of America’s most celebrated painters discovered for himself, over a period of more than three decades, the secrets of the watercolor medium. Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light—which was organized by the Art Institute and will be shown exclusively in Chicago—is the largest exhibition of Homer’s watercolors to be presented in more than two decades. It features 25 rarely exhibited Homer watercolors from the Art Institute’s collection, set in the context of watercolors, drawings, prints, and oil paintings on loan from other museums and private collections. A total of 130 works tells the story of Winslow Homer’s development as an artist, presenting an intimate look at his watercolor practice, his techniques and materials, and the way he adapted his approach and his color palette to the many different natural environments in which he painted, from the rocky, deserted coast of Maine to the lush habitats of the Adirondack Mountains and the Caribbean. The exhibition also examines the way Homer’s watercolors relate to his work in oil and other media, revealing the central role the medium played in helping him to achieve the fresh, immediate, light-filled scenes that have become his most enduring legacy to American art.

Architect Bertrand Goldberg’s dramatic sculptural forms and innovative engineering have long been recognized as seminal contributions to the built environment of Chicago, most notably his groundbreaking design for Marina City (1959–1967). This exhibition, the first comprehensive retrospective of the architect’s work, positions Goldberg’s career within a broad historical framework that extends from his experimental origins at the Bauhaus in Germany and the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition to his visionary plans for the postwar American city.