Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago visitors flock to the Art Institute of Chicago, located in Grant Park, to admire two very important and much-parodied American works, Grant Wood’s famous 1930 painting, American Gothic (the iconic farmer with a pitchfork, standing next to his spinster daughter), and Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks (the painting of people sitting in a late-night diner that adorns many a dorm room wall on reproduction posters).

Of course, that’s not the only art that draws people to this magnificent museum; you’ll also see more than 30 works by Monet, including some Haystacks and Water Lilies, Seurat’s famous Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge and works by Renior, Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso and Cassat, among many others. The building itself is a historical landmark, guarded by two bronze lions at its Michigan Avenue entrance.