With this attractively designed little volume, even the most confirmed armchair traveller can tour one of the world's finest art collections. The 300 full-colour illustrations have been carefully chosen by the museum's director to highlight the very best of this outstanding collection. The Art Institute of Chicago houses some of the most celebrated European and American paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries. Included in this collection are many of the best-loved and most recognized masterpieces of Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Abstraction, Surrealism, and Modernism. Among the European works featured in this volume are Monet's Waterlines (1906), Seurat's manifesto of Pointillism, Sunday Afternoon on La Grande jatte (1884), Kandinsky's lyrical early abstraction, Landscape with two Poplars (1912), Picasso's Cubist portrait of art dealer Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler (1910), and Magritte's riveting Time Transfixed (1938). Besides Grant Wood's famous homage to rural Americana, American Gothic (1930), the American paintings include Coles's majestic Niagara Falls (1830), O'Keeffe's glowing Cow's Skull with Calico Roses (1931), Hopper's haunting Nighthawks (1942), and Pollock's inspired abstract-expressionist Graved Rainbow (1953). The painting of the late 20th century is also well represented with exceptional works by Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, and others. In his preface, James Wood traces the history of the museum and discusses the aesthetic trends that have shaped the course of Western painting during the last two centuries. James Wood is Director of The Art Institute of Chicago.