Marc Chagall’s America Windows at the Art Institute of Chicago consist of twelve panels.
Chagall created the work as a gift to the United States in connection with the American Bicentennial. The completed windows were dedicated in 1977 and installed in the museum’s modern wing. Their blue-dominated palette combines imagery associated with music, literature, dance, painting, theater, and architecture.
The twelve panels form a single large ensemble rather than twelve unrelated windows. Chagall’s imagery includes floating figures, animals, musicians, and symbolic forms, all characteristic of his dreamlike visual language. The work was made with the assistance of glassmakers at the Atelier Simon in Reims, France.
The America Windows are sometimes mixed up with Chagall’s earlier Peace Window at the United Nations or his windows at All Saints’ Church in Tudeley, England. Those are separate commissions with different panel counts and histories.