The Chicago Athenaeum

Category: Museum

The Chicago Athenaeum is an International Museum of Architecture and Design, appropriately based in the world's first city of modern architecture and design - Chicago. Founded in 1988, the Museum is dedicated to the Art of Design in all areas of the discipline: architecture, industrial, and product design, graphics, and urban planning. The Museum's mission is the advancement of public education about the value of Good Design - from the "spoon to the city" - and how design can positively impact the human environment.

As the nation's only independent Museum of Architecture and Design, The Chicago Athenaeum has demonstrated leadership and innovation in bringing the subject of design and its impact on the quality of life before a national and international audience.

Since the Museum's founding, The Chicago Athenaeum has built an outstanding permanent collection of architecture and architectural artifacts and objects of important American, European, and local Chicago industrial design. The collection includes works in architecture, industrial design, graphic design, photographic archives, and film/video archives.