Art Institute of Chicago reopens — and returning visitors finally get an art fix

CHICAGO - Early visitors, as the Art Institute let the public back in for the first time since mid-March, didn't go to "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," typically the museum's most crowded work.

At one moment during the first hour of reopening day Thursday, only a security guard stood in front of Georges Seurat's routinely besieged pointillist study of a Parisian waterfront park.

Instead, many headed straight to the Modern Wing and the museum's newly hung Basquiat canvas - the Art Institute's first by the 1980s art world darling - and many more queued up to get into the big El Greco special