Night at the Art Institute of Chicago

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Free admission will once again be granted to Northwestern community members and their guests during \"Northwestern Night\" at the Art Institute of Chicago, from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13. 

The event is open to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff and their guests, and all are encouraged to wear purple to show off their \"Purple Pride.\" Northwestern participants and their guests will be admitted without charge at the Modern Wing entrance on Monroe Street.

Pre-registration is required to attend Thursday night’s event. RSVP on Facebook. Attendees also will be required to show their WildCARD ID or be a guest of someone from Northwestern with a WildCARD.

Hosted by Northwestern’s Center for Student Involvement, Thursday’s event is part of a recent partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago. Northwestern Night is made possible by a generous donation from Northwestern alumna Shirley Welsh Ryan (Weinberg ’61), a member of the Art Institute’s board of trustees and wife of Chicago business leader and Northwestern alumnus Patrick Ryan (Kellogg ’59), the former chairman of Northwestern’s Board of Trustees.

Through this partnership, only undergraduate students are granted free admission to the museum during normal museum hours, and have access to all special exhibitions, lectures and programs year-round with their WildCARD IDs. These dynamic learning opportunities are designed to serve a broad spectrum of audiences and to enhance perception and spur creativity.

The annual “Northwestern Night” is one of the stipulations of that partnership Shirley Ryan funds.

From 6 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13, Northwestern’s Block Museum student docents will give informal, mini-tours of artworks in two Art Institute of Chicago galleries. The topics of the Gallery 105 tour is the spread of Buddhism and booming of the Silk Road. The Gallery 243 tour will focus on Impressionist painting and Claude Monet.

Visitors can also take a self-guided walking tour of the Art Institute’s Modern Wing focused on sculptures.

To enter a drawing to win free round-trip limo service between the Evanston campus and the Art Institute Thursday night for a group of four, visit Wildcat Connection. Note the drawing is only open to Northwestern students, staff and faculty with a Wildcat Connection account.

For more information about the Nov. 13 event, visit Facebook.

About Shirley Ryan

Shirley Ryan is a 1961 graduate of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She is chair of Pathways.org and serves on the executive committee or on the board of directors of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Alain Locke Charter Academy. Mrs. Ryan has been appointed by two U.S. presidents to the President’s National Council on Disability and has served as chairman of the Chicago Community Trust. She founded and directs Northwestern University’s invitational graduate-level Learning for Life series and has been a charter member of Northwestern's Women’s Board since 1978.

About the Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute, founded in 1879, now has approximately 300,000 works of art in its permanent collection, stewarded by 11 curatorial departments and nearly 500 employees. This collection is housed in eight buildings -- nearly 1 million square feet -- at the heart of Chicago, one block from Lake Michigan and serving as the eastern anchor of the city's downtown. In addition to displaying the permanent collection, the Art Institute hosts 30 special exhibitions and hundreds of gallery talks, lectures, performances and events every year. It has one of the finest research libraries for art and architecture in the country as well as state-of-the-art conservation facilities that ensure that the art of the past carries on well into the future.  

As a University partner, Northwestern has access to more than 400,000 print titles in the Ryerson and Burnham libraries. Processed archival collections are included in the library’s catalog and are available to all museum visitors. The wealth of information in the libraries is an invaluable resource to students, staff and faculty of all disciplines.